


We Tried the World

by Lrihgo



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternative Universe - Dystopia, Alternative Universe - Low Cyberpunk, Angst and Drama, BDSM, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, K/DA poly - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Sex Work, Underground Street Fighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29137557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lrihgo/pseuds/Lrihgo
Summary: In an underground dystopia where surviving is a conscious effort, Kai'sa and Ahri work together to make life for themselves where they have failed on their own. They dream of living off the streets, dream of times long past, and start to try and move forward arm in arm. But this dream is not meant to be as drugs come between them and sends them spiraling. It's an arduous, long journey back to what normalcy they had achieved, but this time, they won't be as alone as they think they are.
Relationships: Ahri/Akali/Evelynn/Kai'Sa (League of Legends), Ahri/Evelynn (League of Legends), Ahri/Kai'Sa (League of Legends), Akali/Kai'Sa (League of Legends), Background Evelynn/Seraphine
Comments: 30
Kudos: 78
Collections: K/DGay





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey im starting a new one ... i wanted to get like more than half way with it before i posted and i think i'm there! i haven't forgotten my other fic, chaos 2, and i should be finishing that up pretty soon, there's really only one (very very large) chapter left.
> 
> i'll restamp as they come up in the chapters, huge content warning for sex work; homelessness; drug use, drug abuse, drug withdrawal, and drug overdose; mentions of sexual assault; drunk sex (therefore dubcon); violence and gang violence; major depictions of mental illnesses like borderline personality disorder, PTSD, anxiety, and depression including depictions of self-endangerment, self-harm, and suicide ideation; and of course a content warning for graphic depictions of sex.
> 
> cw for ch 1: sex work, homelessness, drug use, implied of sexual assault, suicide ideation, violence, and depictions of mental illness.

Nameless, faceless, Kai’sa’s company parts without another word out into the proto-night, their shoes grinding against the oily floor with crunchy, sticky slaps that churns her stomach until they fade into the bleak air. She watches a moment too long, too lost, fighting the half of her brain that still works to move out of the doorway of the run-down motel and into the cold. 

She strikes at the wrist piece embedded into her left arm with a jab of her fingers. It flickers on, floating pixels coalescing into a scratchy, static-filled holodisplay. 

She’s only been paid 100 cp. It was low-balling, but demand was abysmal. No one wanted to push into the streets to get their dick wet when it was this unnecessarily cold outside, not when there were online options that were damn near as good as the real thing. 

It’s that suffocating time of the year where every little cache of points counts. 100 cp was only about a day of food, but she could make it last, if she wanted. It was worth it to keep every bit herself, no pimp to help protect her and take a cut. 

She just needs to find one more customer and she’ll call it a night. 

She steps down the street, arms crossed as she scans the road out of reflex as her breath trails behind her like a looming phantom. The denizens crawl in the crevices like roaches, shying away and staring at her with rotating disks of light in their eyes from the shadows, ever suspicious as they pass pods of liquid and physical drives with who knows what on them back and forth. 

Kai’sa pays them no mind as she slips into an abandoned lot and to her usual fishing spot a block from the motel, a trash heap of discarded scrap metals piled haphazardly behind a decrepit chain link fence.

It’s not unusual for other sex workers to wait here, leaning against the fence waiting for people with money to come slinking by. There’s only one other person shrouded in the casted shadow of a tall, rusty sheet that staves off the cold wind at her back. 

Kai’sa approaches, knowing the unfortunate reality that she’d have to relinquish the next catch to her out of politeness, but the line has been longer and more disputed before. 

When she nears, she notices a fluffy mass moves behind the woman—a cute tail, not small by any means, but proportionate and moving autonomously. 

Those weren’t cheap. Looking at her face, Kai’sa notices the ears of some animal on her head. as well. Also not cheap, especially since they seem to respond to the sound of her nearing as they swerve towards her. Her face is heart-shaped—she’s pretty, though she’s tired, if the bags under her eyes were anything to judge by. The roots of her hair are black through her older platinum blonde dye job. She’s new. But new didn’t mean inexperienced around here. 

Kai’sa sees cloudy wisps drift out from the woman’s side. A thick puff of smoke billows out from her lips as she exhales. 

“Hey,” the woman greets first, scanning her body as a mutual understanding of their position on the ladder suffices for a beat of kinship. 

“Hi. I’m Kai’sa,” she greets, nervously running her hand up and down her arm as she leans against the spot next to her. The metal is ice cold through her jacket.

“Ahri.”

Kai’sa nods, looking about casually, not a soul nearby for the time being. 

The sheet metal behind them rattes as a particularly angry breeze pushes through. Ahri shivers, her tail wrapping around her stocking-clad legs. 

Kai’sa can handle the cold. The half of her that whirs with machine parts pumps heating lines throughout her biopic pathways, comfortable until it isn’t—until she needs to pay up for new coolant. Future her’s problem.

“Fuck this goddamn city, I though we voted winter out last primary,” Ahri says, her teeth chattering as she takes to her cig with an impressive drag, the LED light on the end burning bright.

“Yeah. I thought so too,” Kai’sa murmurs, sympathetic. An idea slowly forms in her head, and she figures she should offer because while it doesn’t look like it, she’s more machine than woman. “I’ve got heating. On my left, though.” 

“Oh  _ hell _ yeah,” Ahri says, scrambling immediately around Kai’sa and pressing her whole side up to her, unabashed in her closeness. The sigh she lets out is monumental as whatever skin peeking out meets skin, freezing cold fingers curling against the small of Kai’sa’s back underneath her jacket. Ahri even turns her head into her shoulder, her icy nose brushing the inside of her collarbone. 

It doesn’t bother Kai’sa any, but it does cause her heart pistons to work a certain way. The color at her cheeks blooms more severely than before, but Ahri doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Fuck, you’re so warm,” Ahri murmurs, laughing a bit around the words. “I can die happy.”

Kai’sa smiles awkwardly, just glad to be of service.

“Want one?” Ahri asks, holding her synth cig in her mouth as reaches down to a bag that dangles at her side, offering the pack. 

_“Please.”_

Ahri one-handedly taps one out, holding the box up to Kai’sa’s mouth. Taking the hint, she leans in, closing around one end between her lips and pulling back. She blushes harder, adjusting with her hand and switching it on so she can take a drag. The compound of chemicals burns right down to her lungs, cleansing in its fiery wake. Perfect on a cold night. Perfect when she’s craving something that hits her senses hard. 

Ahri’s been watching her, her expression unreadable when Kai’sa tries to measure her back. Ahri then looks away, downwards, elsewhere, no explanation inbound. She just leans her head on her shoulder and they bask in a simple moment of what Kai’sa can only describe as humanity. 

* * *

The next few nights, Ahri and Kai’sa meet at the scrap heap, exclusively for work. Kai’sa learns that they’re both in similar situations. They’ve been with pimps in the past, and they’ve both gone solo in hopes of racking in more cache. It was a tough situation to be in, but they weren’t alone. 

They enjoy each other’s presence, comfort found even in the quiet that basks between them as the winter stretches long, bumming synth cigs off of one another when they’re plentiful. They start talking about small things, figuring out each other’s quirks and how they slightly grate against one another in the most curious way. Ahri was charming while Kai’sa was more stoic, but they were both remarkably closed off, emotionally unavailable. Everything was so surface level with them. There was safety in it. 

One day, the ground shakes with deep, tremoring quakes that claps in a cacophony of shifting,  surrounding rock, stronger than the small quakes they’re used to. The floor underneath swings like a pendulum, violent and disorienting. Kai’sa blacks out, hyperventilating and hugging herself when she eventually returns to a semblance of awareness on the ground, and it scares the life out of Ahri and a few other girls who are in the lot that night. 

“Fuck, is she tripping or what?” The other girls begin talking loudly, annoyed that she’s not actually hurt and striking out to save face. 

“Does she not know that she lives thousands of feet underground?”

“You would think, right? What an overreaction.”

Kai’sa can’t begin to fathom a proper response, trembling as she struggles to rediscover oxygen, her cheeks wet with tears as she rocks back and forth. Ahri’s the only one who remains crouched at her side as the others keep talking. 

Ahri stands suddenly, eyes flashing as she snaps. “Fuck off, all of you and your fake fucking up-jobs! Your mechanic needs to install better neck braces for all that junk you’ve got clunking around in your droopy fucking heads! Ugly fucking bitches. Get the fuck away from me before I throw each of you through that fucking fence!”

Offended, flabbergasted, they stare, laughing nervously amongst each other as they shake their heads and weasel out of the lot, talking more shit all the while. 

And Ahri keeps her company, a hand finding its way to the back of Kai’sa’s head and massaging her scalp, such a strangely affectionate gesture. 

Kai’sa finally comes back, exhausted, shaking, confused that Ahri’s done this for her. 

“Hey,” Ahri says gently, noticing that the lenses of her electric lavender eyes have focused back on her, seeing her for the first time in a while. “Want some fruit?” She asks, already reaching in her bag. 

Kai’sa nibbles on slices of dried peach, enjoying the sour tackiness of it. “Why?” She eventually asks. 

“I don’t know. It just wasn’t fair of them, was it? We’re supposed to be looking out for each other.”

From then on, they’re friends. 

* * *

At a certain point, they don’t just meet during work. It starts becoming a regular thing that they meet in ration lines for handouts. They sometimes even meet for something hot to eat when the money allows for it. 

They wrangle in business steadily enough. Kai’sa sees how Ahri hones in on the fence, haunches shifting like a cat, how fiercely she negotiates and draws johns in, how  _ confident _ she is as she talks. If she doesn’t land, it all melts away in an instant. Ahri gets so tired when she has to play it up, summoning up the last of her energy reserves she doesn’t even have when she thinks it’ll get her something. 

Sometimes, Ahri crashes extra hard, too tired to find the reach to even make it to the fence and scan. 

Those days, Kai’sa wordlessly goes for a walk and returns soon after, antsy as she presses a single-use vial of blue liquid to Ahri’s hand, knowing that it picks her up, so she’s only trying to help with what’s at her disposal. It’s called scratch and it’s hard to find in its purest form most days, since the market was flooded with knock offs and a multitude of homemade drugs, but Kai’sa knew a guy. They inject it, one after the other, into the nerve centers of their bionic parts. 

The two of them stand taller, the effects washing over as metal deep underneath their skin vibrates, flaring with heat and energy, feeling better than genuine muscle ever had. It’s like those parts always belonged, but they feel better, stronger, sharper. As the drug thrums through real nerves, it’s empowering, painting them  _ invincible _ , ready to steal the night in leaps and bounds, the high making them more aware and superior in every single way. It only ebbs away into gaping, gnawing nothing in the latest hours of the morning as the giant domed light of the sky ceiling blares its familiar ugly, washed orange. 

Ahri begins to learn where to place her boundaries with Kai’sa’s help. She tells her how she can say no, how she has it in her to turn anyone away that she doesn’t want to serve. But Ahri struggles. God, she really struggles, especially when cache comes up. And she slips through the cracks more and more, but they try to keep each other up. Kai’sa catches her when she can, but she has work to do herself and she isn’t always by Ahri’s side when she’s tempted.

They ritually end up at a rundown hoverboard park to wash up from the night’s work. The restrooms there are mostly functional and sometimes stocked with toiletries, and that’s the best they really get around here. If they get really lucky, they get hot water from the spout for a few minutes, and they’ll just haunch over the faucet there, letting it run over their hands, giggling like kids who’ve gotten into the cookie jar, elated in their little slice of happiness that they usually forget to actually wash with it.

During the day, they sometimes huddle close together under a dirty scrap of nylon at the back of any convenience store that’ll let them sit for more than 20 minutes, vigilant as things around them move more lively, quicker, arguably more unpredictable. On rougher days where they’re cracking down on solicitors, it’s to the back of bionic repair shops. They’re the next best thing with cameras pointed down on them and it’s a little more acceptable since long waits around the block to be serviced were common, but it depends on who’s in working that day whether or not they get a bench to sleep on instead of a known paying customer, so it’s a toss-up. Uncertainties were interwoven like barbed wire on every horizontal surface they could lay their heads on, but they took every second of  rest they could without complaint.

The worst times are during the night, waiting for one another to return from the motel they’re both using down the block. The hours seem to stretch long, and at a certain point, without at all agreeing beforehand, they lie in wait until the other returns safe before even thinking about the next job, switching off like that until the sky ceiling no longer keeps the hole they slink into dark. 

There’s always nights like this one, not few and not far in between, where Ahri returns to the lot, deflated, her eyes blotchy, sometimes limping. Kai’sa runs into her with open arms and Ahri buries her face into her shoulder. She never asks what happened for fear of pushing her too far, but Ahri tells her anyway as a precaution, usually what the guy looks like so they can try and get word out to protect others. It breaks Kai’sa’s heart into a thousand tiny shards.

And it’s horrible, shit luck. Ahri does tend to garner a larger, less predictable crowd willing to say anything to see her up close because of her ears and tail. Kai’sa is no stranger to rough treatment when she’s working, just not nearly on the scale that Ahri seemed to be. Kai’sa aches for her, hating how she can’t fight off any of the pain Ahri’s had to endure by holding her tighter, but fuck, if she doesn’t try. 

The night Ahri returns to the lot and can’t tell her anything as she sobs into her chest, trembling and saying how she wishes she was dead, Kai’sa holds her and vows silently that she’ll protect her. She never wants her to feel like that again. 

* * *

The guy that had Ahri that night slinks around the fence after that, throwing around talk of more money,  _ daring _ to show his face, turning Ahri’s stomach. She shrinks back—she looks so small as she ignores him pointedly, hides away from him, grabbing onto Kai’sa’s sleeve that subtle way that says they’ve got to go. 

But Kai’sa doesn’t hold her tongue. She tells him to fuck off, adrenaline and drugs working overtime throughout her whole body. But he doesn’t take the hint. He shoves his way behind the fence, right into their safe space, his stance aggressive as he approaches all puffed up, shouting back belligerently. 

Kai’sa rips away from Ahri and was upon him too quickly for him to know what really happened, consumed by pure fight response. Kai’sa sees the whites of his black eyes as she decks him straight in the face and he hits the ground _hard_. Something else takes over, something yawningly carnal as Kai’sa mounts the guy’s shoulders and beats his face in until the skin comes off of her knuckles while Ahri screams, telling her they’ve gotta go, she’s gotta stop, she’s going to  _ kill _ him. And she thinks  _ good.  _ No one else deserves to die more than this guy. She’s never felt so empowered by the steel in her hands. It’s like she really  _ can _ kill him. 

But she’s being dragged off, her heart pounding in her throat, blood roaring in her ears as she pants like a beast unleashed, the audible whirs of her metal workings screeching out high on her every vicious breath. She’s absolutely out of her mind, far wherever her crazed high has stolen her away to. 

Ahri wrangles Kai’sa all the way back, turning her around and grabbing fistfuls of her hair and anchoring her burning eyes towards her own fear-swollen ones. 

“I’m okay, you’re okay. It’s alright. I’m right here,” Ahri whispers, a rhythm, a mantra, repeating herself, soothing—so soothing Kai’sa can count the cadence of it, catching on the pretty way it flows. She starts to believe it. She puts down her fists and finds herself agreeing. She’s okay. She’s right here. He wasn’t going to hurt Ahri again. Kai’sa is worked down, pacified, brought back to somewhere over her shoulder, but not quite to her own two feet. They’ll be okay. 

They’ve got to go. The guy spits out teeth and globs of blood, probably concussed, but still stirring, still able to call the authorities. So they book it, Kai’sa’s knees aching and skinned through her pants and blood dripping down exposed bone and metal, her hand in Ahri’s as they put as many pitch black streets as they can between them and that grizzly scene. 

They collapse into an empty, slimey alleyway, spent and gasping for breath, their legs splaying out uselessly. Ahri turns into Kai’sa, her forehead falling to rest against her chin, an incredulous, scratchy laugh shaking her shoulders. 

“I can’t believe you did that,” Ahri whispers into her shirt, sounding aghast, her eyelashes tickling Kai’sa’s collarbones. 

“I’d do it again.”

That gives Ahri meaningful pause. She buries her face harder into her, her fuzzy ears flat against the crown of her head. 

Kai’sa only blinks, the painful throbbing of her hands becoming more prominent as she clenches and unclenches her fists around Ahri’s jacket ( _ her _ jacket, but Ahri just wears it better), liking how close she is, but struggling not to touch her, even though Ahri is practically draped over her. Any other time, she’d pull her arms tight around her, but right now, she feels like her hands are too much like weapons, a stunted embarrassment thick over her mind that she can’t crawl out from under. 

The gentle rock of Ahri against her chest as Kai’sa breathes in and out is comforting, at least. 

“We won’t be able to go back there,” Ahri says, muffled. 

“I don’t care where I am. I just want to be with you,” Kai’sa admits. 

Ahri falls silent again, nodding her understanding, resonating with that shared truth. 

From that night on, they’re inseparable. 

* * *

They spend the next few days laying low. It’s hard work, finding somewhere to set up shop again. Most places are under syndicate protection, operating an in-network business that comes with a tax. Neither Kai’sa nor Ahri are looking for that, so they try getting in on a strip club gig for a more steady income, but they just aren’t looking for girls, they’re so full-up on options.

From the unsuccessful conversation with the club manager, they’re overheard by a worker who tips them off that they can fish at a nearby place that wasn’t affiliated territory, so they gratefully take directions from her. She also tells them about two other clubs in the area that could possibly be hiring and she recommended checking often and being persistent. It was like a revolving door of people in and out and they definitely needed to get lucky, especially if the both of them wanted to work at the same place.

Kai’sa walks with a bit of pep in her step, finding the more positive side of things at the new options before them. “New neighborhood... it’s a little more lit up, more traffic. That’s sort of nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Ahri shrugs. “Where the hell are we gonna sleep, though?”

“Uh… hm. Let’s check out the other two clubs, find that spot, and ask around?”   
  
“That’s so much walking, do we have to do it all tonight?” Ahri pouts.

“It’s not that far.”   
  
“We’ve walked so much today, already. My feet are killing me.”

Kai’sa stops dead in her tracks, a bit guilty as she realizes she  _ has  _ been toting her around all night. The last few days, actually. It was the first full day since beating the shit out of that guy that she hasn’t been sore out of her mind, so she knows she’s been too eager to get back on her feet and figuring things out, especially since money between them was running low.

“I’m sorry… let’s find somewhere to rest. And I’ll treat you to something hot to drink.”

Ahri beams at that. 

And true to her word, though Ahri tries to offer her the last of what she has holed up in her cache, Kai’sa refuses her. 

They sit, cradling hot, sweet drinks in their hands and sitting shoulder to shoulder on the side of the road. 

“You don’t have to do stuff like this for me, you know,” Ahri whispers, her breath mixing with the steam curling from her up. “You can just leave me if I’m dragging you down.”

Kai’sa simply shakes her head. “You’re not dragging me down.”

“But it’s work. I’m work.”

“You’re not.”

“You look after me all day and night. Isn’t it annoying?” Ahri asks.

“No, because you look after me.”

Seeing that she wasn’t getting anywhere, Ahri gives up. She just wasn’t ever going to convince Kai’sa that easily, but she selfishly prefers it this way. She just wants to hear that she’s wanted. 

* * *

The next few weeks are hard. They scrape by the borders of gang territory, narrowly avoiding confrontation of having to clarify their affiliations to anyone.

The job hunt is even more taxing. Most places, they need proof of home address and a worker’s wellness certification card. So they stopped going to most places, digging lower and lower for every scrap of change for the time being, just getting by on the bare minimum, panhandling for most hours of the day and selling their bodies at night. 

And they get hungry. They get tired. Most of the time, drugs distract from both of those things, but most other times, they just don’t have the money for any of it. At least, Kai’sa starts saying to herself she doesn’t have the money for it, putting away what little she can as they make their cache stretch far. She has someone else to watch out for now, after all.

Some weeks are downright good. The pay can be relatively decent, especially when they’re able to bring in inexperienced johns and hike up their prices.

There even comes a week when Kai’sa finally makes the down payment for her own place. It’s small and it doesn’t have warm running water, but the landlord is desperate to rent out and it’s just barely in her price range. 

The place is a repurposed, ramshackle garage at the bottom of a tall stack of single-floor units. There were no rooms, just a large empty space closed up by the garage door itself that pulled up along a janky track. There was a kitchenette, a metal tub, a toilet, and a spout in the wall that was about knee-height that she could attach a hose to. The walls were a maze of pipes and insulation with no windows, the seams of the place lined with dubious looking mold. 

The plus side was that the building’s radiator warmed the space nicely, biding away the cold as long as the garage door was closed. The floor, however, was constantly freezing—it was oil-stained cement with several mismatched rugs made of cheap material thrown over it, a choppy mosaic of nylon and polyester. With enough blankets, the mattress on the ground pressed up into the corner near the radiator was plenty for a good night's rest. 

To Kai’sa, it was home. It’s more of a home than she thought she had claim to in this life, but she needed a break and she was taking it. 

Naturally, Ahri helped throw a housewarming party. It was her and a few faces from the street who seemed to all take turns down on their luck, but cause for celebration was always sought after. They were genuinely happy for her. 

It’s a long night of drinking. They also pass around a plastic case of unmarked pills and Kai’sa doesn’t think to ask, just noticing that everyone’s only taken one. So she mirrors them eagerly. 

And it’s good fun—the kind of fun that really only comes with four walls and a roof. The giddy excitement of it never really fades away, especially when the pill hits, happy and full. 

When things have winded down into the late morning, with most of her company dozing off, everyone picks up and clears out, wishing her luck. Then, it’s just her and Ahri sharing a synth cig out front, the garage door opened up to their calves behind them. 

The street buzzes with cruisers shooting back and forth, a busier intersection, but it’s nearly impossible to find somewhere in the city that wasn’t.

“I should… go, huh?” Ahri says, voice pressed and husky from laughing and drunken singing all night. 

Kai’sa looks down her shoulder at her, confused. “What? Why?”

“I just… you probably wanna get to sleep and I’m, like…” Ahri trails off, having forgotten to take a drag from the cig before she passes it back. 

Kai’sa tries to make sense of what she means, but she’s still too crossfaded to understand. “Why do you have to go?” She repeats, a pit of worry forming in her stomach. 

“It’s your place. You probably wanna break it in. You know. You don’t need me hovering around you all the time. It’s actually  _ yours _ , Kai. And I’m so proud of you, you know.”

Kai’sa thinks she understands what she’s saying. “You can stay,” she blurts out, an edge of panic in her tone. “Of course you can stay. I’m sorry I didn’t say earlier, I thought it was implied and I realize now that was… that it wasn’t  _ obvious _ obvious.”

Ahri swallows audibly, and much to Kai’sa’s dismay, she crumples before her eyes, breaking down into a sob, hands flying to try and block her face as she tries to keep stitched together. She doesn’t care if she smears her makeup with her sleeves, just trying to turn and hide her face. 

Stunned, Kai’sa feels so slow to respond. “Hey, what’s this all about?” She asks, her heart catching as she turns off the cigarette and pulls Ahri into a familiar, comfortable embrace, sobering up slightly at the anxiety that gnaws at her. Kai’sa presses her nose to the crown of Ahri’s head, her own throat clenching as her own tears threaten. 

“I don’t know. You’ve done something with your money, and all I do is spend mine on bullshit. I’m dead fucking weight, and soon, you’re not gonna want me around bumming off of you. You’re gonna get tired of me, too.” Ahri remains stiff in her arms, not having returned her embrace as her hands grip at the edge of her jacket. 

“That’s not true, baby,” Kai’sa says, her hand slipping through Ahri’s hair so she can scratch her scalp soothingly, scratching her behind her fox ears. “I want you here. This is as much your place as it is mine. I don’t wanna live here without you. If you walk away, I do too, I don’t  _ care  _ if it’s mine, I don’t want it.” 

Somehow, that wracks Ahri’s body with a particularly hard sob, and Kai’sa feels distinctly torn in half, confused and bled bare as she feels so useless. The way she squeezes Ahri hard gets her close to feeling whole again, but she has a better idea. “Hey, come on, let’s go inside.”

There isn't a complaint as she shucks up the door on its rusty tracks and they duck under it. Kai’sa struggles to pull it closed for a beat, but she manages to latch it down and lock it.

Ahri’s still crying, but it’s more reserved, tears still falling, just standing like she’s uncomfortable in her own skin, like really thinks she doesn’t belong there. She’s hugging herself, shivering as she stares down at the floor, ashamed. Kai’sa bites the inside of her lip, aching so much. 

“Here. Jacket off,” Kai’sa murmurs gently, helping her out of it. She notices her breath on the cold air, already, but she’ll remedy that. “Boots and pants, too.”

Ahri does that much, sniffing and wiping her eyes with her bony wrists. 

Kai’sa guides Ahri over to the side of her bed, slipping by her to move the blankets aside. She tilts her head down at the mattress in wordless invitation and waits. 

Ahri considers her, uncertain but trusting. She lowers herself down on her knees and crawls underneath the blankets. Kai’sa piles them back on thick around the both of them. Ahri’s tremors visibly stop as heat begins to seep in and cradle her, too comforting to disregard. 

The radiator close by kisses the tops of their heads and their noses with wonderful warmth. It’s probably a fire hazard being so close, but it’s nice. 

Kai’sa settles after some nervous fidgeting, but she still thinks they’re missing one thing. So she shifts closer to Ahri’s back, shyly making the voyage through the sheets to wrap her arm around Ahri’s waist. She’s done it many times before out on the streets, but now, it’s so tender and fulfilling, it leaves butterflies in her stomach as she pulls her tight to her. Ahri’s ears swerve back, her tail tucking to accommodate her. 

Kai’sa’s face is full of blonde hair, but she doesn’t mind. She kisses the back of Ahri’s head, and it feels so  _ right _ in her mind that she only second guesses it after that it might have been a little weird—a little too touchy, all considering. But Ahri doesn’t seem to mind as she sighs out like a weight has been lifted from her chest, nuzzling into her pillow, her crying having stopped completely. 

Kai’sa comes to the conclusion that winter might be her favorite simulated season, after all, as she drifts asleep.

* * *

“Where did you ever get your tail and ears?” Kai’sa asks one day as Ahri sits in the buffed metal basin of the bathtub, warming two buckets of water right against the closest, most oppressive heat of the radiator. She watches their surfaces vigilantly, making sure they don’t hit a full boil—watching until they just barely start to steam.

“I got really lucky. A john I met became a regular of mine. He liked me and had a kink, you know, so he paid for the whole thing. He was really, really rich. I was sort of full time with him for a while.”

“What happened to that arrangement?” Kai’sa asks.

“You won’t believe it... he was actually killed. He had a hit out on him. High profile kind of shit.” Ahri says, her voice becoming heavy with the memories that she hasn’t sorted through in a while. 

Kai’sa grimaces, slipping on her oven mitts as she shifts one of the two heavy buckets off of the ledge and towards the tub, her arms flexing, but not quite straining. She dumps in a little, quickly checking with Ahri to see if it’s too hot. Ahri nods her head, smiling up at her cheekily, folding a bit under her eyes as she pulls her knees up higher to hide the bottom half of her face as the butterflies from such a dedicated act of service makes her heart wile out.

“Do you ever miss him?” Kai’sa resumes the conversation at hand after she’s deposited all the water in and she returns to the radiator for the last bucket. 

“Sometimes. I think I just miss his money, though. I feel so fucking stupid for blowing through it so fast, but I got comfortable. I didn’t know, couldn’t have known… but I acted like it was always gonna be around forever. You’d be surprised at the kind of life I was living…”

“Tell me about it.”

Ahri lets out a wistful sigh, hands playing across the surface of the water. “I went to clubs, ordered top shelf liquor, wore pretty dresses, gambled... That was just the life for me, you know? I still sort of think it’s the life for me.”

Kai’sa, submerged in thought, nods her head. Ahri does seem suited for something more elevated than whatever this was, something not just gilded in small golden moments. And though she’s currently in the happenings of trying to give her something as nice as a warm bath, she feels like she’s falling spectacularly  short. Her work could never really be done until she has  _ everything _ for her. 

Kai’sa falls quiet wondering when it was exactly that Ahri became so centrifugal to her life. She chases every fleeting happiness with her, no matter how small.

“What about you?” Ahri shifts her question over to her, hanging on the edge of the tub as a cute, ever-persistent flush dusts her cheeks. 

“What about me?” 

“You’re half, aren’t you? Like, legally a cyborg?”

“Yes, I am,” Kai’sa says slowly, staring into the white hot metal of the radiator as she braces herself for what she knows is coming. 

“How did that happen?”

“I, uh…” Kai’sa hesitates, tugging her hand out of a mitt and dipping her finger quickly into the last bucket, slowly coalescing the words. “I was found.”

She stalls from saying more as she gets busy pouring in the last bucket, satisfied with the height of the steaming water. She places the bucket aside, pulls off her mitts, and tugs up a rusty cylinder they’ve been using as a step stool. She sits at the side of the tub, gesturing for Ahri to turn around. 

Getting the hint, Ahri relaxes forward. Kai’sa uses a flat bowl of well-worn tupperware to wet her hair, massaging her fingers along her scalp, scratching her ears where she likes and preparing the concoction of fragrant oils she’s splurged on for her hair.

“I was brain dead,” Kai’sa continues after a very long beat, her timbre vulnerable. Soft. “I don’t remember anything from before. When I woke up, I learned that this company had been working on me for months. I was some sort of passion project.”

“Did they tell you anything? From before?” Ahri asks softly, catching that this must have been a difficult conversation for her and navigating it as carefully as she knew how. 

“Not much. Just how they found me. Half of my body was totally eviscerated... they figured I was pulled out of some kind of machinery accident. I might have been a mechanic engineer working on the thermo barriers. But my old PID was destroyed, so they lost track of who I was. My body had been passed around like a class pet, after all. I think preserving who I was was the last thing on their minds when they were busy stroking their own egos to the idea of bringing someone back to life.”

“I’m so sorry. That’s so wrong,” Ahri whispers, imagining the horror of losing her autonomy like that. Who knows what they really did to her body while she was gone? Who even gave them the right? There was certainly a moral gray area on the propriety of bodies and their collected parts that they aren’t alive to use anymore. 

“You might have been an engineer but… you don’t remember  _ anything _ about that? Not even your childhood?”

“Nothing. And I ran from them before I figured out any more. I don’t even know what I’m really like, you know? It’s confusing. Why did they upload what they did in my cerebral chip? The languages I know, the histories about the time above ground. Like, is it  _ me  _ who likes to dance when no one is looking? It is really  _ me  _ who speaks in this accent? Or is it  _ them _ who entirely cultivated this woman they wanted to serve them when she woke up? What’s even left of Kai’sa from before? Was there ever really even someone like that? Did she matter to anyone?”   


The way the words flow so easily, Ahri can tell that these thoughts must have constantly been festering in Kai’sa’s head. 

“I don’t have any of those answers… but I can tell you about the Kai’sa from now.” Ahri turns by around to face her, reaching out of the water to cup Kai’sa’s downcasted face, working her palms up and around her neck, making her lean close. “She’s brave, fiercely loyal, caring, and the hardest working person I know.”

Kai’sa closes her eyes, resting her forehead against Ahri’s damp one. Her chest hurts, filled with the loathing she usually manages to keep at bay about what she is. It claws out of her, overflowing from her mouth, revealing the rot that sits inside. “How do you know I’m those things? How do I know? If I took out my chip, I’d be nothing. No one. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. I’d be a body. A pair of breasts, a fancy sex doll… what if ‘Kai’sa’  _ is _ just that fucking chip?”

Ahri’s wet hands slide up from around her shoulders, threading through her hair and tightening that way that she knows Kai’sa likes—that way that she knows grounds her when she’s had a particularly bad day. She even lets out a little sigh, a small resignation to her attempts at comfort.

“You’re not being fair to my friend,” Ahri whispers. “I want you to stop saying things like that about her.”

Kai’sa chokes out a pitiful laugh, screwing her eyes closed harder to try and block out the tears that cloud the corners of her vision. “Your friend the android. I might as well be. I fucking _hate_ what I am.” 

“Why is a chip any different than a brain? Don’t they function the same? Can’t you download new information in that head of yours whenever you want by going out and doing something new?” Ahri tries instead, not willing to give up on Kai’sa while she’s drowning in existentialism, begging for her help. 

Kai’sa doesn’t concede her point, walling up in a defiant silence.    
  
Ahri continues, softly bumping her forehead with Kai’sa’s to try and draw her eyes. “Don’t you like to listen to new music? Don’t you like finding new places to be? Don’t you get to choose the people you like?” 

At that hanging question, Kai’sa opens her eyes, the pretty electric lavender disks of her eyes rotating to focus on her. It makes her heart skip. Ahri swallows and wipes away her stray tears with her thumbs, leaving more dampness there than anything. “Those are things you can’t program into someone, Kai’sa. Those things are _you_." 

Kai’sa regards her affectionately for a long while, scanning her face in a moment of raw intimacy that makes Ahri feel bone bare in front of her, like she can’t hide behind any subtleties or secrets. Ahri reflexively wants to shrink away from her, her heart thudding at an increasing gallop at a particularly unmistakable linger of Kai’sa’s eyes on her lips. 

Ahri’s fingers untangle from her black hair, something like fear turning her chin away, left dazed and knowing that any part of Kai’sa right now was too tempting to get lost in—her wide shoulders, her muscular arms, her slightly oily tank and baggy pants (hell, she sure looks the mechanic part). The fact that she’s naked, herself—though it doesn’t bother either of them to begin with, it suddenly feels so scandalous. 

“Thank you,” Kai’sa breaks the silence, her voice so low, it’s a bit gravelly. Ahri hides a shiver by sinking farther back into the tub. 

“You’re welcome,” Ahri murmurs, running her hands up and down her arms to quell the goosebumps there. “I really do try. You just do so much for me. I know I don’t deserve it, but if I can give you back even a fraction of what you give me, then it’s worth it.”

Kai’sa idly wipes at the water left over on her face, running her fingers through her long, loose hair and pushing back any stray offenders. “You know you do a lot for me, right?”

“Yeah, right. Sounds fake.”

Kai’sa grins, amused. “You want me to give you a list? Sparing no details?”

Ahri sinks into the water up to her shoulders. “You won’t,” she challenges meekly. 

Kai’sa laughs, warmth filling Ahri’s chest, wonderful in its presence, painful in how it longs for something more than she’s afraid to ask for.

And Kai’sa starts firing off in all cylinders, starting with that day during that big earthquake as she washes Ahri’s hair, much to her embarrassment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is gonna be really heavy, but if you enjoyed so far, gimme a follow @chilopawbi or @Lrihgo on twitter and stay tuned!(:


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for ch 2: drug use, drug abuse, drug withdrawal, drug overdose; drunk sex; major depictions of mental illness; and suicide ideation, specifically suicide baiting

Work on the street is the same. With a solid place to sleep, their schedules become a little more consistent, a little more free to be _people_. Kai’sa starts to save up her money where she can, and in three months, she’s finally able to surprise Ahri with a gift. 

“I hope I got your size right,” Kai’sa says, gnawing on her knuckles as Ahri considers the bargain garment box before her. 

“Wait.” Ahri pauses, fingering at the lid of the box. “You got this… for me?”

Nervous, Kai’sa nods, unable to bring herself to look at the scene any longer as she turns away, ears catching on the sound of Ahri pulling the lid up and unfolding the cloth inside. 

“Kai’sa… I can’t… it’s _gorgeous_.”

Kai’sa turns back around for a beat, her heart fluttering at the big-eyed look Ahri treats her with as she holds up a stark red ensemble to her collarbones.

“I’m glad you think so, but the suspense is _killing_ me! Try it on!” Kai’sa pleads, having to turn back away to catch her breath, both of her hands on her neck as she begins to pace. 

“Okay, okay! Just. Gimme a second.”

And Kai’sa takes interest in a particularly loud pipe by the far wall, eyes trying to follow the maze-like criss cross of the others there, tapping at her side, unable to sit still. 

“Okay. Can you zip me up?”

Kai’sa finally turns, met with the expanse of Ahri’s back, the split of the fabric flattering the curve of her body already, and Kai’sa’s brain capacitor forgets how to do its job. 

Dry in the mouth, Kai’sa fumbles the zip in her fingers, eyes drinking in the sight as the dress shimmies closed in a flirtatious little dance. Kai’sa shamefully pretends to have some trouble with it just to stare a stolen moment longer before she works it all the way up. 

“There,” Kai’sa breathes, mentally berating herself and completely unprepared for when Ahri turns to face her. 

Kai’sa covers her mouth, her eyes pressed to slits like she’s looking straight into a light too bright as she takes it all in. This dress more than flatters Ahri, it should have been criminal to look so good.

It’s flowy, but hugs in all the right places, the cut across her shoulders low and tantalizing, the double off-center slits exposing her long legs. 

“Wow. Yeah, that’s absolutely stunning. I… I’m glad it fits. Do you like it?”

Ahri pads up to a small circular device mounted on the wall. The cheap thing powers on and an orange light winks at them. Then, the device projects Ahri’s reflection, the picture staticy but in full color, three dimensional, and in real time. Ahri turns back and forth in front of it, impressed that even her tail didn’t obstruct the silhouette of the dress. Kai’sa had thought in length about the right fit for her, after all. 

“I love it! I can’t believe you got me something like this. I’m _floored,_ Kai.” Ahri pauses, realizing one tiny problem as two of her look over at where Kai’sa is standing. “But when am I ever going to be able to wear it?” 

“Tonight,” Kai’sa explains, smirking as she leans back on the table, relieved that everything was working out thus far. “We’re going clubbing.”

“What? Wait. Really?!” Ahri stretches up a whole three inches taller, tail wagging like an excited puppy. Kai’sa only continues to smirk, the gesture growing bigger, unable to hide her smugness. “Oh my god, Kai, are you serious?!”

“Yes, I’m serious,” she says. 

Ahri screeches, jumping up and down, doing a victory twirl. She practically pounces on her, then, kissing her cheek and hugging her tight around her neck. 

Kai’sa blushes, awkwardly slipping her hands around her waist and patting her back, the polite shock of Ahri’s lips on her sending her halfway back to a coma. 

Later that night, they doll up to the soundtrack of crunchy, unrecognizable music from a cheap one-unit radio.

And god, Ahri really is beautiful all done up. She absolutely steals Kai’sa’s heart, with her swooping eyeliner, her redone dye job, and the dress. To top it off, she slips on Kai’sa’s beat up faux leather jacket to cover her shoulders. It’s really the cherry on top. 

Kai’sa hasn’t bought herself anything as nice as what Ahri has to wear, but she has treated herself to a pair of faux leather pants and chooses a black, sleeveless, turtleneck crop top with it. And neither of them have new shoes, so it’s glaringly obvious that they have to slip into their old, worn out boots. 

It bothers Kai’sa that she hadn’t the foresight to just save a little more to make sure that Ahri at least had a pretty pair of heels to sport, but she had jumped the gun. Her anxiety didn’t allow for any subtlety, didn’t allow the luxury of preparing a surprise in the works for so long before it was tight on her chest and shaky in her hands. She _needed_ to know that everything she’s done was effort well put in so far. She craves Ahri’s quick validation. This wouldn’t be the last time Kai’sa chased it. 

They head out, leaving the garage behind, vibrating with anticipation. Kai’sa puts out her arm and Ahri latches onto her, and they go out to take what the protonight has to offer. 

* * *

The local entertainment district was never without grandiose. The bright, swirling lights and signs pulsed for their attention, strobing like rows of stress beacons, an overload for the senses that draws them to look, linger, and indulge. 

Kai’sa and Ahri hop from club to flashy club, progressively the most drunk the either of them have ever been, being fickle with how they party and giddily changing scenery if they don’t deem it worthy of their fluctuating standards. And it’s fun to pick and choose—fun to be judgy, fun to wrinkle their noses when they think there’s more to offer at the place next door. All it took was the crowd coming off as lackluster, or too sober, or too loud, too quiet—it didn’t matter what it was, they were on top of the world. 

It’s fun like Kai’sa has never known. There’s real, kinetic energy that only comes with the proximity of other dancing bodies and throwing back drinks, the enjoyment of blending in and feeling a sense of belonging cradling her into a resounding comfort she can’t find on her own, a comfort she relishes in with Ahri. 

Ahri was enjoying herself, too. She has matched Kai’sa shot for shot, cocktail by tall cocktail, laughing and twirling and glowing, freer than Kai’sa has ever really seen her. Ahri really did belong in this scene, indulging because she could, taking the club by storm with her infectious charisma with music pulsing through her, moving the both of them in a ripple as they jump and sway and _live_.

Ahri eggs Kai’sa on when the pumping synths and bass kicks are especially good, watching in loud excitement when Kai’sa, consumed by loose abandon, shows Ahri how she really likes to move.

“You are so goddamn hot, Kai’sa!” Ahri screams over the music with the approval of the club goers who’ve shared in her performance. At a certain point, Ahri’s hands are on body and never straying, always brushing and pulling and caressing, staking her claim, dissuading the onlookers from sharing in their time. And Kai’sa notices. Ahri’s hands passing over her burning skin never leaves the forefront of her mind. 

The seams of Kai’sa’s last remaining nerves fray away with her latest drink into drunken ease as she swoops Ahri flush to her, raising both of their arms above their heads and dancing back to front. Kai’sa’s mind wanders with her hands as the lack of light and space makes her dizzy with newfound curiosity, in the same vein that Ahri had touched her earlier. Ahri goes a step further as her arms bend back, feeling for Kai’sa’s face, bringing her _closer._

Kai’sa traces the down contours of Ahri’s body, brushes over the soft fur of her tail unabashedly, hands gripping her hips in a divisively non-platonic way. Ahri hooks her hand behind Kai’sa’s head and directs Kai’sa’s lips to an ear at her side. Kai’sa’s hot breath works a full shiver down Ahri’s body as she bares her neck in invitation. 

Kai’sa observes cluelessly for a beat, confused at what’s brought before her in offering. A dark passenger guides her way as she crooks down, breathing hard as she buries her face there, liking how Ahri’s body rolls when she sighs against her. First, she plants a chaste kiss, testing the waters. 

Ahri balls her hand in Kaisa’s hair, pinning her in place, directing her silently. She licks a tentative stripe along salty skin, reflexively gripping Ahri’s hips harshly as she squirms and whatever noise she lets out erodes against the blaring, coarse grain of the music.

Unsure of when their shifting has become grinding, the smooth motions even more pressing, more furious, more super heated. The need for relief is stifling, bands of tension tied tight around Kai’sa’s gut. 

Panting like a dog and rutting against Ahri like she’s in heat, it should have been blaringly _humiliating_ the first second she noticed it, but she’s slow on the ring. Eventually her sense comes around, too little but not too late. And it wasn’t right— _couldn’t_ be right. They were getting too carried away. 

Kai’sa breaks rhythm, the shame of it stunted but significant enough so that she stumbles back, her breath drawing unevenly between slightly chapped lips. Her face is alight in a flush, the cruel trail of it burning down to her core, tight with desire. She’s incapable of sorting through her feelings while she’s this drunk, but she knows that she shouldn’t. Not here. 

Turning around to her in question, Ahri trips on her own two feet, her knees shaking as she falls face first into Kai’sa’s chest. Kai’sa catches her with strong arms, wondering what it is she’s supposed to do now.

Their dancing falls off into drunken clinging, Ahri’s arms becoming a permanent fixture around Kai’sa’s shoulders, her face buried in her neck. She’s worn out and limp, but still on her feet, still finding enjoyment in every passing minute, leaving whatever tension had been there aptly behind. Or maybe she never even noticed it to begin with. Maybe she forgot. 

“We should go home,” Kai’sa says right into one of Ahri’s droopy fox ears. It flickers like she tickled her. 

“ _Nooo_. Wanna dance more. Jus’ a little longer,” Ahri babbles, her arms tightening, causing Kai’sa to draw down to her, her shoulders hunching. 

Kai’sa plants her cheek against the crown of Ahri’s head, eyes floating around the room as an invasive need to protect her flares out. She’ll fight the entire world tooth and nail to preserve this moment for as long as Ahri wishes. 

They return home, feet aching, swaying, one foot in front of the other having become a laborious task at least two hours ago. 

Ahri pipes up, slurring words all over, hardly able to keep her eyes open and her head upright, but wistfully fulfilled and expressive. “That was the best night I’ve _ever_ had,” she says for the umpteenth time. 

The approval sings so warmly in Kai’sa. She’s so glad to hear. “It’s going to be a bad fuckin’ hangover,” she replies, a second more sober since they left club. But she still struggles to keep her footing true as she leads the walk on the beaten path. 

“No, no, no, I had, like, a singular cup of water, I’m… uh, should be good.” Ahri says. A beat later, she slips on a sheet of icy metal on the sidewalk and catching Kai’sa’s side with all her weight. 

Kai’sa snorts, somehow keeping the both of them upright before trudging on. “Yeah, by that logic, I should be good, too.”

They both giggle as they round the corner of their block, the arduous journey home finally completed. Kai’sa crouches down and swipes her wrist over the lock of her garage and shucks up the door, stumbling back into Ahri, who snakes her arms around her, chin pressing in between her shoulders.

Kai’sa smiles lopsidedly and they shuffle inside. Kai’sa manages to pull the door back down to the floor once they’re both in with Ahri still wrapped around her, not minding the extra weight at her back. 

“Hey, Kai’sa?” Ahri asks, muffled into Kai’sa’s back. 

“Yeah?” 

“Look.”

“Me?” Uncertain of what she wants, Ahri’s arms around Kai’sa loosen so she can turn in her embrace to peer down at her. 

Kai’sa is stricken momentarily with how intensely Ahri regards her, how close their faces are.

“Thinking awful hard there?” Kai’sa asks, though her breath is suddenly robbed from her at just how pretty Ahri is, even after a night of raucous partying. 

“Have I ever told you…” Ahri starts, playful behind cloudy blue eyes. “That you’re gorgeous?”

“No,” Kai’sa’s mouth forms, awkward around the word as she senses something shift, but she’s too drunk to pinpoint what. 

“How about strong?” Ahri asks next, her hands brushing over the length of her shoulders and down her arms, sending shocks of electricity right through the pumping pistons of Kai’sa’s heart. 

“I think you’ve implied,” Kai’sa says, slow over the words and trying not to be clumsy, but it’s hard. 

“Well, you’re gorgeous. And you’re so—so strong.”

At that, Kai’sa chuckles, one note and faint. “Thanks.”

“Do you ever think about me?” Ahri asks, her hands gliding up the front of Kai’sa’s body, absent of subtlety, no doubt left that she wants her closer, leaving Kai’sa stunned at Ahri’s surmounting boldness. 

But Kai’sa really shouldn’t. She’s gotta be more responsible. There’s no way either of them really _want_ this, dirty dancing in the club aside. It was just drunk fun and drunk games and drunk touches and drunk glances at slightly chapped lips so pretty in the low orange light of the radiator. 

“I think about you all the time,” Kai’sa still whispers past the knot in her throat, her arms caging on either side of Ahri, planted on the table that’s suddenly stumbled in behind them, darkly amused at how Ahri’s brows sink lower, how her lips become a little more slack, how her eyes becoming black and more lidded. Kai’sa takes great pleasure in the length scroll of Ahri’s hungry gaze over her, unsure if she’s ever going to see a sliver of hesitation. 

Ahri blatantly stares at her mouth in turn, incapable of shifting her attention elsewhere. “I like that you spoil me.”

“I like that you like it,” Kai’sa says, small, waiting, _wanting._

It isn’t certain who leans to kiss who first, but they stumble into messy lip service, their breath heavy with alcohol. It’s not pretty. It’s not romantic. And it definitely wasn’t perfect. Kai’sa briefly considers that Ahri must be a better kisser in any other situation, but she’s not carrying her own weight, either. Confusion governs their touches turned light pets turned gropes.

Kai’sa has Ahri leaning back with the force of her. Ahri sounds acutely with a thin gasp as Kai’sa slots herself between her legs, realizing a little late exactly what she’s invited.

Ahri’s hips shift forward, catching solid on Kai’sa’s thigh, a genuine moan bursting so pleasantly from Ahri’s chest. Kai’sa’s nearly floored by the sound, groans as digs her hand into the small of Ahri’s back and encourages her to ride it out, smitten with how her hips look gyrating on her with increasing intensity. 

They’re both breathing harder, seeing less clearly, hands wandering in a frenzied flurry as their mouths move elsewhere. 

Kai’sa shoves her weight more harshly against Ahri, scooting the table an inch back with an ugly screech. The moan that spills from Ahri is husky and needy, it clings to Kai’sa’s skin, shoots straight down to her core, fires more urgency in her head. One of Ahri’s legs rises up to hook around her, drawing her in, hazy desire thick over her head. 

Ahri takes one of Kai’sa’s hands and directs her to the junction of her thighs, spreading farther for her and sinking back onto the table in full as she sighs out her lungs. 

Head swimming, Kai’sa’s fingers are guided all the way under her dress, immediately met with an excessive amount of warm dampness through her thong, the surface slick with her arousal, coming away on her fingers in small threads.

“I can’t—Ahri, how are you so fucking _wet_?” Kai’sa breathes, starry with disbelief.

“What’re you gonna do ‘bout it?” Ahri challenges, head tilted like she can’t quite keep it up. 

Kai’sa pushes past, blinded by lust and clenching so hard in desire, it comes as a relief to both of them when she slides one finger in and the second soon after. It’s so easy, it’s criminal, the way she takes her all the way to her knuckle, how she _sounds_ as she fucks her right there.

Ahri gasps, hips bucking up into her palm, lightly fisting Kai’sa’s hair as she slurries out, “ _Oh my god_ , oh my god, _Kai’sa_ —” 

And all of Kai’sa’s hang-ups fly out the door, every single damn one. 

“Bed.” Kai’sa blurts and Ahri nods like she doesn’t know which way is up. Kai’sa scoops her up so easily, collapsing into a confusing jumble of fur and legs onto their huge pile of blankets. 

There’s an attempt to shed their clothes, their movements heavy and uncoordinated. They give up at a certain point, resorting to touching under fabric as Kai’sa gets Ahri off like they’re being rushed, no room for enjoyment, like the moment is being snatched away as it happens. 

Ahri’s gasps and pleas were husky in Kai’sa ear, her arms caged around her shoulders and her blunted nails hooked into Kai’sa’s skin as she grinds into her hand, telling her how good it is, how close she is, and _that, yeah, fuck me, baby, just like that_. 

Ahri comes around three of her fingers, her head thrown back, glistening, glowing, gone, gone, _gone_. Kai’sa stares, squinting, things moving too fast and too slowly simultaneously. Her breaths are ragged like the edge of a serrated blade, slowing with Ahri’s. Kai’sa is still buried in her long after Ahri’s walls stop constricting her fingers rhythmically. Kai’sa slumps her head down onto Ahri’s shoulder, struggling with maintaining balance as to not trip all of her weight onto her as she draws out from between Ahri’s legs and shoves down her own pants, getting herself off right on top of her. 

Kai’sa grunts, head heavy like lead as she clenches and comes, the both of them panting, lost, too tired to open their eyes back up, too out of their minds to come to a consensus about what has just transpired. They drift asleep like that, a slumped mess of limbs and sweaty clothes. 

* * *

Kai’sa prepares breakfast in the late, hungover afternoon. She’s nursing one of the buckets in her arms as she waits for the starches to cook, her head bowed as the withdrawals pulls her two different, excruciating ways, not knowing which one she needs more—a hit or a drink. She brushes her teeth until her toothbrush bristles stain red, the throbbing of her gums something to focus on in the meantime. 

“Fuck, _that’s_ a hangover...” Ahri stirs, her voice scratchy from sleep as she stretches and moans in stifled agony. 

“Afternoon,” Kai’sa greets lowly, beyond nervous as she spits into the bucket and tosses her toothbrush into the little holder on the floor next to the tub. Kai’sa stands up from her crouched position, steadying herself against the counter, finding her bearings in the spinning room, and returns to mixing the contents of her bowl together. 

Ahri groans. “I feel like I got hit by a car.”

“We had a lot to drink,” Kai’sa explains. They had put away so many drinks between the two of them, and Ahri was certainly a lightweight in comparison to her. “I put water on the floor next to you.”

Ahri takes to the cup eagerly, sighing out in content when she’s downed the whole thing. “Wow, I got fucked _up…_ can’t even remember like, half of it. When did we get back?”

“When?” Kai’sa repeats, the cold creep of panic blowing up like a balloon in her sour stomach. _Oh god. Oh_ fuck _._ Every inch of Kai’sa’s insides drop to her feet as she freezes mid-pour into the flat sheet of her sizzling pan, the wind knocked out of her. “You don’t remember?”

“No, I was blackout drunk after, like, the fifth drink…”

Kai’sa struggles around fleeting syllables as she begins to disassociate, looking down on herself, watching as she mixes in cheap blended protein to the clumps of browning grain in the pan, frozen solid through even though her mouth still moves. “I mean, does it matter when we got back? We… got home.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ahri shrugs. “What’re you making?”

“Uh. Food.” Kai’sa puts the bowl down, watching herself as she leans against either side of the hot contact stove as she sinks further into the abject horror of the fact that she fucked her best friend and she didn’t remember it. 

She’s close to blacking out, herself. Everything is blurry around the edges, very few things in focus except for the panic that rises front and center into her throat, tightening around her windpipe as the corners of her eyes begin to water. 

Ahri sighs big and turns to flop back in bed, stretching stiff, sore limbs. “You’re gonna spoil me. A fancy dress, a night on the city, _and_ breakfast in bed?”

Kai’sa feels so sick. “Are you surprised?” She asks, her tone clipped. 

“I guess I should expect it, shouldn’t I?”

A beat later, Ahri notices that she’s still in her dress. “Ah, fuck… I wanted to hang this up and keep it looking nice.”

Does she notice how fucking sticky she is? Can she still feel it if she shifts back and forth? 

Kai’sa presses on for something to distract. Something to talk about. Nothing comes to mind at all, but Kai’sa watches in muted relief as her own mouth speaks for her. “We should do laundry anyway. I can figure it out.”

“I can wash clothes. I _might_ not fuck it up. But not today. I just wanna sleep.”

“Sleep, then.”

“M’head, though,” Ahri whines. 

“Me too. I’ll be done in a minute.”

She serves breakfast and they eat at the table, both miserable over the food, struggling to get it down, but Ahri makes sure to compliment her cooking after damn near every bite she can stomach, which wasn’t a whole lot for either of them. 

“You really don’t remember last night?” Kai’sa whispers, having resorted to pushing her food around her plate. 

“I mean, I do… the club and dancing and all of that. It was a lot of fun. I really did have a good time,” Ahri tries to assure her, sensing that Kai’sa is upset. “I didn’t mean to get so fucked up that I didn’t remember your present. I’m sorry. I know you saved up a lot to treat me...”

“No… it’s fine, I just wanted you to have a good time. I’m glad you did.” 

And that’s as far as the discussion of the night goes. Nothing comes out over their late dinner, either. The acceptable window to open up with the truth closes steadily behind her.

Ahri asks Kai’sa to come cuddle with her in bed after they take separate baths, but she refuses her. The thought of touching her makes Kai’sa wants to spear her nails into her skin and grind her teeth into dust, the disgust of her own actions is so overwhelming. 

The only thing they do together like normal is shoot up scratch and the hit couldn’t come soon enough. 

Kai’sa goes first with the needle, prepping her dose while Ahri sits cross-legged across from her on the mattress, watching her as casually as ever when it comes to these things. 

Except Ahri notices something different as Kai’sa draws her pick of poison into the barrel of the needle. “Hey, that’s like… double what you usually take,” she points out, unsure of why she needs to step in after so long of them doing shit like this, but it’s worth it’s weight, the way she worries. 

“I’ve taken this much before,” Kai’sa mutters, avoiding her eyes as she lines up at her neck in that familiar spot and injects. Ahri can see how scarred up and bruised the area has gotten from there. 

And Ahri can’t fight her. She only bites her tongue and receives her dose, but she still feels too sick from the booze to warrant a full hit, so she halves it. There is some relief in the familiar coax of the high, but it’s been hitting less good lately, so she can easily ignore it. She just doesn’t care for it as much, anymore.

Kai’sa splays down onto the floor, looking up at the ceiling as her eyes familiarly glass over, her fingers dancing over her skin idly where she’s full mechanical parts under pseudo-skin, lost in sensation, pleasantly far away. 

“Wanna lay down in bed, baby?” Ahri asks as she clears away the stuff, unsure of why Kai’sa has chosen the floor to begin with. 

Kai’sa shakes her head. “No, I’m fine here.”

“You sure? I can move if you wanna be on the bed by yourself.”

“No. I’m fine here,” she repeats. 

Ahri bites her tongue and nods her understanding. If she wants space, she’ll give her space. 

From then on, Ahri sees a wall being built between them, and the lay of every brick frightens her. 

* * *

Kai’sa sits with her back ramrod straight, her fingers restlessly working to push back her cuticles as Sarah Fortune fixes her up with a stare that pins her sharp to her seat.

“See, I’ll give you that you’re pretty. You’d be popular. And honestly, I don’t give a fuck where you’re coming from, you don’t need any fancy certificates for me ‘cause I don’t believe in that shit. You’ve got the job if you can pass a drug test. That’s it,” Sarah finally relinquishes. 

Kai’sa stares dumbly, subconsciously drawing more of her half-down hair over her neck where she injects. “Oh… do… do you do tests here? Like now?”

“Hell, if you’re that eager, I’ll put in the order for one and you can start pole dancing _tonight._ You don’t look like the tweaker type, so it should be fine for you.”

Sarah has completely misread her. It makes Kai’sa sick and she’s so familiarly out of her mind, like she’s blacked out but someone’s still piloting her body. Her words come as an afterthought like she thinks she said it in the present, but it plays out like she’s viewing it in a recording. “I just have another friend I wanted to check in with before I went taking any jobs, but I’m glad you’re hiring, because I’ll definitely… talk about it with her.”

Sarah kicks up her boots on her desk, eyeing her suspiciously almost like she gleams her lie, but she can’t be bothered much as she shrugs one shoulder. “Does your friend look half as good as you?” 

“She’s beautiful.”

“Tell her to quit her job, too. Come and work for me.” And Sarah nearly checks out then and there, her attention rapt on the curved screen to her left. 

“She would have to, uh, find her own replacement... or something… it—it could take a while.” Whatever it was people with daytime jobs had to do. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m desperate for girls right now, so just keep in touch.” She waves Kai’sa out and she doesn’t need to be told twice. 

Kai’sa slips out of the office, her head hanging as she tries to avoid the eyes of any of the daytime patrons drinking at the sleepy stretch of the bar and the sparse club workers who consider her curiously on her way out the door. 

* * *

“How long does it take until we come up clean?” Ahri asks, her head swimming as her eyes follow Kai’sa’s vigorous back and forth pacing. 

“I don’t know… two weeks? More?”

“Well, what is she testing for? Like… scratch or...?”

“Fuck, I didn’t even think to ask. Everything? Anything? _Fuck,_ ” Kai’sa sighs out her lungs, the dread heavy on her chest. “And I couldn’t ask, even if I wanted to. She said I didn’t look like a user.”

Ahri scoffs at that. “The fuck is a user _supposed_ to look like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I could even...”

“Get clean?” Ahri surmises. 

Kai’sa nods, feeling grossly ashamed, a failure before she’s even considered starting. 

Ahri steeps in that for a while. And for all it’s worth, something clicks, driving her forward with a plan. She stands from her seat at the table and throws her arms out. “Let’s… let’s just fucking _do_ it.”

“Huh?” Kai’sa looks at her, confused. 

“We can do it, right?” Ahri asks, slipping up to Kai’sa and promptly stopping her pacing, grabbing her softly by the elbows. 

Kai’sa searches Ahri, trying to understand her willingness where hers clams up in her throat, choking her. She pulls away from her touch, reluctantly growing the distance between them again. “I just… I don’t know,” she croaks, so _fucking_ embarrassed. She keeps a handle on her anxiety with scratch, and even then, it's only ever gotten worse off of it.

“I know I can. That means you can, too. I mean, this is a job opportunity we’re talking about. A steady income…”

But Kai’sa has to be realistic. “It would be nice, but what if she tests regularly? And how do we even stop?”

“We can stop right now,” Ahri says with a note of confident finality. “We’d save so much more money if we did, too. We can start paying for net passes and get connected again and see what kind of resources are out there.”

“I don’t… _fuck_ …” Kai’sa melts down into the seat Ahri has just been occupying, hunching over with elbows on her knees and her face in her hands as she struggles with what feels like being pulled five hundred different ways. 

“You really don’t think you can?” Ahri asks after a beat, the concern there as she awkwardly stands in front of her, not having reached out again for any sort of physical comfort. 

Kai’sa scoffs, _knowing_ she can’t, but she’s not willing to face that humiliation so readily. “Not just… using and then going to _nothing_ like that.”

“But we have to get clean _fast_. There isn’t any other way that’s cheap… but we can do this, Kai. Promise. And we’ll help each other, okay?” Ahri gets on her knees, a hand gently on Kai’sa’s leg. She looks up at her, her crystal blue eyes big and bright and honest, but her brows pinched in worry. “I wanna be a working lady with a job. If I have to give up drugs, then I’m fine with that.”

Kai’sa folds her fingers over her mouth, already needing a hit to quell the tightness in her chest. She bores holes down into the back of Ahri’s hand, shifting her knee in a poor effort to try and shrug her off, but Ahri is persistent in how she holds tighter onto her.

Ahri wouldn’t touch her like that if she knew what she did to her. 

Kai’sa swallows bile, all her energy having vanished at the prospect of the trials ahead. “Why are you so ready to do this?” She asks, subdued, quiet. 

“ _Because_ , I don’t want to be out on the streets high off my ass forever,” Ahri whispers, laying her heart bare in front of her. “I just want to do better.”

“It’s not going to be easy.”

“I don’t care, as long as I’m going through it with you.”

Recognizing those words from a past that seems so distant, her very own words, Kai’sa concedes. 

She’s still contrite, starkly consumed by her mistakes, but this could be her absolution. If she can do this, then she could shed this vessel that’s capable of horrible atrocities under the influence. She could apologize in confidence that that wasn’t who she was anymore. 

That’s what Kai’sa tells herself, anyway.

* * *

And the withdrawals are a bitch—worse than Kai’sa could have ever imagined. She hadn’t truly realized how much of her normal life revolved around her next hit to bring her back to her zen, to chase away the suffocating cloud of anxiety and unease that weighs on her every step until she was without. 

The signs of them had always lingered at the seams when her high came down, but never with such a vengeance as when Kai’sa was two days into sobriety as she knew it. 

Night becomes sweat-filled tossing and turning, no comfort extracted from her bed. There’s a crushing weight that never lets up on Kai’sa’s ribs, forcing an uncomfortable vice grip around the lining of her throat that burns all the way up and down with a sourceless acidity she can’t cough out. 

She bolts up from her messy sheets, hyperventilating as tremors rumble the ground, making the one place she feels safe a sea of sickness—a cacophonous, rattling cage of commotion. Kai’sa can’t tell if the tremors are real or fake, but it doesn’t matter. They rock her world so often when she’s falling asleep, she skips sleep altogether, vigilant in her eyes as she looks around the room and at hanging fixtures for the tell tale swing that spells an earthquake. Propped up in a chair, weak in her body, limp at her wrists and head, _exhausted_ , she runs the scenario over and over and over again in her head how she would grab Ahri as fast as possible before the 9 stories above their heads crushed them—or worse yet, buried them alive. 

She lays in the tub at the height of the third night, the cold metal biting cruelly at her burning skin, kissing intimately close like frostbite. It’s so fucking nice until the sensation turns back to harsh burning, back into uneasy sweats. 

Kai’sa hasn’t even noticed Ahri at the side of the tub, the time lost on her, irrelevant except for the fact that every second stretches longer and longer the more she suffers.

“You should drink something.” Ahri says, her voice husky from sleep.

The thought of stomaching _anything_ makes the acid in her throat return so severely, it makes the corners of Kai’sa’s eyes water. “No.”

Ahri at least tries to get her back to bed, but Kai’sa refuses her, telling her that the safest place is the tub. It doesn’t entirely make sense, but it does bring some comfort to her after days of dealing with it all. 

“Okay, do you want me to bring you a pillow and a blanket?” Ahri asks before she leaves for bed. Kai’sa doesn’t know whether or not she said yes or no, but she does return with a pillow and their thickest blanket. 

Kai’sa puts them between her and the offending iron beneath her back, the coolness of the curved tub diluting through them and delivering an ice pack of relief. 

“Here, just a little, for me?” Ahri asks next, offering a cup of what she assumes is water. 

“ _No_ ,” Kai’sa repeats, so close to comfort, she just _can’t,_ _won’t_. That’s the last thing she needs. 

“Please, Kai, you didn’t eat or drink _anything_ today, just a s—“

“I don’t fucking want to!” Kai’sa snaps, the words ripping out of her throat, so ugly to her own ears, it rattles off the metal of the tub with a chilling overtone. 

Ahri flinches as if struck, sinking cold as the physical shock of it flash freezes her in place. Her chest clenches, instinct screaming at her in warning that this was a stranger that was going to hurt her.

But it was _Kai’sa_. Kai’sa who never raised her voice at her, who was always patient with her, who was always taking care of her, cradling her, holding her hand, _snapping_ at her, the kind of woman that was wholly capable of beating a man’s face bloody. 

Ahri leaves the side of the tub, scrambling away and into bed numbly. She was only trying to help, but she feels stupid. Useless, clueless, stupid, stupid, _fucking stupid._ She wants to leave, to find some self-deprecating hole to crawl into. She wants to rip her way to the surface of the earth and evaporate away into crushing outer space. 

The following days don’t go any better. At every turn, Ahri is painfully reminded of her shortcomings. She steadily learns her place—quiet, complacent, watching as her and Kai’sa turn into tired, broken husks of themselves.

And Kai’sa falls harder into the never ending tide of her insistent sickness. She’s so tired of it. She’s so done with it. 

Ahri doesn’t ask any questions as Kai’sa pulls on a jacket and stumbles out of the garage, pallid in the face and only coming to when she shells out CP from her piece at her dealer, not waiting another precious second to find somewhere private to huddle before she fills the barrel of a needle with the entire pod’s murky contents. She doesn’t even think it she’s doing something stupid and wildly out of her mind until she’s seizing on the floor, blaring blue and red and wailing sirens filling the cavernous crevices of her mind as the high puts her somewhere cripplingly familiar. 

Square one—where she was born, her origin. The yawn of the void welcomes her back like one would an old friend, the gaping embrace of its body cradling her, tricking her eyes closed as she resigns to the tide of it as it carries her away. 

* * *

She doesn’t stay under the swell of that blackness for long. The comforting kiss of that darkest place recedes into pale, lifeless walls. She’s laying horizontal, searching for swinging fixtures foremost. The earthquakes were happening and she didn’t have a clue where she was.

Kai’sa tries to bolt upright, but she’s clamped down by cruel restraints that dig into her irritated, itchy skin. She could cry, had her disassociation not walked her consciousness out of the sterile room and into the hallway, into the cracks of the floor and down into the city, confused and lost, trying to fit the pieces together. 

Her heart hammers behind her teeth, pulses at her every shallow breath. The IV drip curls around her arms, around her neck, snakelike and spitting venom into her blood, chilling her, bringing her back to her body as she fails to project away into fake lives, fake seasons, fake people. 

Kai’sa turns her head and vomits suddenly, the viscera of her stomach pure acid, singeing a line up her esophagus, the smell of it bitter, eating away her every sense. 

She screams out, a sound hardly human, croaking and jagged, looking for sympathy, for contact, for _humanity._ It doesn’t ever come as an android transfers her to another bed, too flat, too punishing, too painful on her back and her aching body. No one hears her complaints or pleas.

No one cared. 

The _fucking_ earthquakes. The ceiling comes down when she closes her eyes, so she stares, vigilance punished as microsleep conquers her exhausted brain until she’s nothing. Just a body, just a project, flesh and bone, parts, and a chip. 

When sleeps conquers her, there’s this face in her dreams. Heart-shaped with crystal blue eyes, tired but bright as they look back at her. She’s so pretty, it aches in Kai’sa’s whole body, stinging particularly cruel and sharp in her chest. 

Held down even in her sleep, Kai’sa watches helplessly as Ahri turns and disappears into inky black tendrils of shadow. 

* * *

There is no pomp and circumstance. No debrief, no holding her hand, no walking her out in a wheelchair and reintroducing the outside world to her. The hospital dumps her on the curb, charges her piece, and like that, Kai’sa has a looming debt over her shoulder.

The most natural progression in her head occurs—back to her dealer, back to the people who had seen her at her worst. She was stopped and asked if she’s alright by strangers telling her what they were doing that night when she hit the ground and the role they played in her hospitalization. 

Kai’sa doesn’t hear any of it, in actuality. She just wants her one fix, just the one to bring her back to normalcy. It’s a redo, a witless march back into step, a disconnected truth that if she gets this right, then everything that happened will have been erased, like it never happened at all. 

And when she gets her bump, it’s out of body business as usual as she shucks up the door to her home and ducks into the garage.

A clatter of noise and warmth that she’s been aching for collides into her—a frantic embrace, overwhelming and nothing simultaneously. 

“Oh god, you’re here. I'm so glad you’re—fuck, I-I went looking for you because you didn’t come back and some people told me what had happened and I tried to see you, but they just didn’t let me. They wouldn’t even tell me how you were doing. _Fuck_ , I’m so glad you’re back. I was so worried, Kai. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry,” Ahri rambles, trembling and gripping Kai’sa like she’s trying to hold the both of them together. 

The shame, the regret, the ugly guilt Kai’sa felt closes her throat off to the excuses, the lies she wants to feed her, the apology that she knew she owed her. But she’s silent. And she doesn’t hug her back. 

Ahri takes a step back, sniffling, taken aback as she takes Kai’sa’s face in her hands, inspecting her person. “Are you okay?”

Kai’sa doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I’m fine now.” 

And Ahri isn’t stupid. She knows the signs, notices the dilation of her pupils, the way the rings around them rotate and try to focus on what’s right in front of her. She catches it so fast. “Are you… Kai’sa, you got out of the hospital from an overdose and went to go get high?”

Kai’sa’s irritation flares, though on the surface she only shrugs her shoulders. “What else was I supposed to do?”

Ahri’s irritation roars back, white hot fire with fire. “I spent days here waiting for you to be okay, worrying about if you were alive or not, and _that’s_ the first thing that comes to your mind?!”

Kai’sa doesn’t respond. Can’t even bring the words to her stupid fucking mouth that drugs weren’t the only thing she thought of while she was bolted down to that bed, but how could she help it when she knew the first thing she could do for relief was get a hit and all the sickness goes right away?

“So what, you finally don’t want me around any more?” The question pinches up as the emotion closes Ahri’s throat, getting physical as she shoves her back. Kai’sa’s shoulders hit the door and she stays there. 

That question hangs in the air, poised and growing fat off of the tense, gluttonous silence. Kai’sa is appalled, thinking she should be ready to fight her on that familiar, awful sentiment, but it’s then that she sees that maybe this is just what Ahri needs. 

“I fucking told you I’m dead weight. But you always knew, didn’t you?!” Ahri gradually escalates to yelling, the words grating and cracking in pain as Kai’sa doesn’t come to rescue her away from her own thoughts. “You knew you couldn’t rely on me for help, but you pretended to anyway. And for what? To make _me_ feel better?! Look where it fucking got you!” 

Kai’sa swallows down bile at the tears she glimpses at the corner of Ahri’s eyes. 

Ahri hugs herself close, the tragically prettiest collapsing house of cards Kai’sa’s ever seen. “You didn’t want my help. You wouldn’t sleep in bed with me anymore, you didn’t want me holding your hand, you didn’t want me knowing that you were having trouble. I just wanted you to trust me and you didn’t. You _don’t_.” Ahri stares down at nothing, her voice low and shaking. “Just fucking admit it and I’ll go.”

Kai’sa knows she's already hurt her so bad. She can’t ever give Ahri the life she deserves. It’s delusional that she’s convinced herself that she might be worthy of her to begin with. Kai’sa dashed any hope of that when she raped her. The last thing Ahri needed was someone who took advantage of her like that. She needed to get far away before Kai’sa drags her down to whatever self-sacrificing hole that’s crawling up her ankles and swallowing her whole. 

So what was one more push? 

“Yeah. You’re right. About all of it. What could you really ever really do for me but drag me down? You’re clean, now. So what are you still doing here?” Kai’sa doesn’t have to try to deadpan her way through it, her nerves are unusually fried. “Why don’t you go and tell her you’re ready to get tested, go get your job, and get the fuck out of my house.”

Ahri snaps, her screams tearing out of her lungs, ragged and sharp, brutal and hollowing. “You’re right! All I ever was to you was some stupid fucking piece of shit WHORE! I’ll do you and this whole fucking city a favor and fucking KILL myself! I’m better off fucking dead! I’ll fucking hang myself or slit my fucking wrists, no one cares how I do it as long as I’m fucking GONE!!”

Ahri shoves her scant belongings into her bag as she screams, an awful combination of watery from her tears and soul-deep hurt. 

Kai’sa’s glad she’s high out of her mind. She doesn’t think she can handle this reality sober. Not that it would have happened if she were sober, but it’s just another item chocked up on her list of her irreversible fuck-ups. 

Ahri leaves the door up and open, crying the hardest Kai’sa has ever seen her ever cry, but there’s a mental disconnect in the seriousness of what’s been done when she’s long gone. The hole she leaves in her chest gapes just like coming down from a good high, empty already before it has even worn off.

What a fantasy land she’s lived in. A world above the water didn’t suit Kai’sa, anyway. She belonged in the depths, gasping for breath and struggling quietly to keep her head up above black waves, but she likes the burn in her lungs when she inhales anything but air. It’s the only place where she feels alive. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing much to say, this one is sort of a transitional chapter. leave a comment if you're enjoying this! follow @chilopawbi or @Lrihgo (nsfw twitter)
> 
> for ch3, content warning for homelessness, suicide ideation, major depictions of mental illness (BPD), self-endangerment self-harm, gang violence (implied human trafficking)

Ahri gets the job at Sarah’s strip club. It’s mostly spite that moves her, but it’s the grief of the missing hole in her life that she needs to fill more urgently than anything else, lest the desire for her to walk to the bottom of a canal and drown gets any stronger. So she works long nights that bleeds well into the day. It’s exhausting work, but her coworkers tell her it gets easier.

Sarah catches Ahri working well after her shift, tidying up the bar in the sleepy morning. Sarah takes her excuses that she’s lost track of time and she didn’t mean to stay so long the first two times she’s found out.

And it’s achingly busy but easy work—folding napkins or rearranging bottles. Ahri learns how to dodge around her boss and keep at it until Sarah threatens to pull the rug from under her entirely, citing that she really doesn’t need her working herself to death and how much more expensive that whole endeavor was.

In all actuality, Ahri didn’t have anywhere else to go. Her first paycheck was still two weeks out and she hadn't even started looking for a place. Her tips kept her fed when she felt like eating, at the very least.

Ahri senses Sarah’s trepidation with keeping her on the team part time while she’s having difficulty with the basics. Ahri was just so _slow_ at remembering where things were in the club. She was having trouble staying focused for long periods of time over suffocating music and equally loud lights—an effect of the drugs missing from her system, she suspects. Or maybe things were always this difficult to remember. She can’t recall which it is.

Ahri spends her mornings after her sparse shifts loitering at a nearby convenience store coddling a hot drink in between her drawn up legs and her chest, nodding off into her sleeve bridged across her knees until the night finally rolls back around again. It feels like the old times in the worst ways. She’s freezing fucking cold and she loses a lot of sleep.

One week, she’s caught sleeping outside by one of her coworkers who recognizes her and in a panic, Ahri scrambles to her feet frantically to try and explain.

“Stop.”

Ahri swallows, her throat tight, blurry-eyed and desperately trying to hold back tears.

“I’ve been there, don’t need to hear it. Just pick your shit up and come on,” she says, beckoning with a single finger for her to follow to her car. And Ahri does. She doesn’t have a choice. She’s desperate.

Her name is Sivir, and she’s remarkably cold outside of work, since the job called for a certain amount of face and pep. It doesn’t entirely surprise Ahri, but she doesn’t warm up to it, either.

Within the first minute that Sivir introduces Ahri to her small one bed, one bath, she makes it abundantly clear that Ahri wasn’t staying for free and that she was on loan with her, an uncertain amount of time until she has to pay her back.

And Ahri understands, even enthusiastically agrees that she’s indebted to Sivir, eager to do her part and finding a simple contentedness working towards the one goal of paying for her monthly portion of rent. Something to focus on.

Ahri can’t help but compare Sivir to Kai’sa. They really only share the fact that they’re tall and have very similar builds, but they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Kai’sa seemed to enjoy her company, Sivir was quick to hide away from her when she got home. It was rare that Ahri got a greeting back when she did come home and Sivir was never interested in talking to her about where she had been or what she was up to.

And with Ahri bunked up on her couch, she sees her go in and out most of the day, a suspiciously busy body with a dark cloud hovering over her. With nowhere else to go and with very few friends, Ahri finds herself tasked with figuring out Sivir’s business to keep sane.

She just needs to insert herself because it’s hard living with someone who won’t even look at her. It’s exhausting to think that Ahri has to manually weasel her way into Sivir’s life, but she wants her attention—she’s hungry for it.

Ahri makes dinner one night after they both return from work, something she’s seen Kai’sa make many times—fried starch and protein patties, sans any vegetables because they were too expensive at the ration market.

And Ahri knocks on Sivir’s bedroom door, the metal rattling impersonally into the slim hallway.

Sivir cracks it open, still toweling off after a shower and squinting down at her—sparse, dim light haloing her silhouette. She doesn’t even give her a _what_ , she just stares, expression hard.

“I made dinner,” Ahri explains, beckoning with a pinch of her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “You usually eat when I’m in the shower, don’t you? But I thought we could eat together today. So, I cooked...”

Sivir considers her for a stretch of time before she slides the door closed, much to her chagrin. Just when Ahri thinks she’s being shouldered off completely, “Give me two minutes,” Sivir says from the other side.

Ahri does a small fist pump and rushes back to the kitchen and fixes up both of their plates, elated and working fast.

Sivir finally arrives at the table, her brown hair still a bit damp along with her loose-fitting clothes. Her blue eyes scroll the scene without comment and she seats herself in front of one of the plates. In the off-white light of the overhanging lamp, Ahri notices for the first time that there are several scars crossing over Sivir’s face. She had no idea—she’s always seen her from so far away or in a quick blur.

“It’s just starch and protein...” Ahri starts. “I tasted it… it’s pretty decent.”

“Didn’t know you cooked.”

Ahri _leaps_ at that opening that Sivir gives her. “I kinda don’t. I’m bad at it, but I picked up some things from my old… uh…” Ahri pauses, thinking of how much she fucking _missed_ Kai’sa. It had only been three weeks. It felt like fucking _years_. She swallows around the sudden, thick emotion that often overwhelms her when she thinks about her. “My... my old… roommate.”

Sivir nods, taking a few prolonged, utterly uninteresting bites before shrugging her shoulders, Ahri watching pointedly. “It’s alright.”

 _Just alright?_ Ahri forces herself to keep her mouth closed and expression schooled because she just wants to grimace. She wants to cringe, wants to run out of the apartment, wants to scream into a pillow and punch a wall or rip her hair out. Her tail lashes at her side, swift like a whip cutting the air.

“Okay...” Ahri murmurs, picking around at her plate, the bile in her churning stomach boiling up with her frustration. She feels insufficient, small, _stupid_.

And it all takes over, thick and suffocating like a plastic bag over her head. She falls back into old antics. “If you want me to leave, I will,” she says, so bitter, so _tired_.

Sivir looks at her, slow to the take, scanning her for her damage. “What?”

“I can leave if I’m bothering you. Move out.”

Sivir falls totally quiet, peering at her with growing resentment. And it puts Ahri back on the hot spot where she hasn’t expected to be until an uncomfortable amount of time passes.

“What the fuck do you want me to say?” Sivir asks, sharp and no nonsense, sitting up a little taller, more intimidating in the angles of her big shoulders.

Ahri feels even stupider. “I don’t know,” she breathes, unable to look her in her eyes, her ears flat against the top of her head.

“Think about it.” Sivir sounds forceful, but she simply continues to eat her food.

In spite of how awful this was, it’s still the longest conversation they’ve ever had. It’s not positive interaction, but it’s something. And Ahri clings on to it. God, does she cling.

“It’s just…” Ahri tries, falling flat on any purchase of what might placate Sivir, but she doesn’t want to turn that ire away from her, so she dangerously continues to walk this tightrope. “Dinner was, like, 40 CP. The least I could get is a thank you.”

“You piss me off,” Sivir replies, no pomp or prep, just steamrolled honesty right into her face.

Ahri prods her, a rush of excitement swirling at her gut, sending her spiraling as she grabs right onto the offered side of this double edged blade. “Then just kick me out.”

“You’re such a fucking brat,” Sivir dismisses her, leaving her plate half eaten as she pushes abruptly out of her chair, the screech of it on metal underfoot grating on the ear. She scoffs with one final look down her nose at her before she briskly returns to her room, shoulder loudly in and slamming her door.

And it’s the theatrics of it, the loudness of Sivir’s steps—Ahri wasn’t sure what she was expecting going into it all, but this all has her sitting confused, _longing_ for something she can’t quite pinpoint.

So that’s why she knocks on her door when dinner is done and away, impatient as Sivir keeps her waiting. The most hurtful thing she can do to her unknowingly is to ignore her, but Ahri is determined.

She knocks again, louder, saying nothing. Then she’s pounding on the door, relentless, _bruisingly_ hard, her heart pumping faster as she hears Sivir stomp up to the door.

Sivir throws it open, sneering, breathing a little hard, jaw muscles bunched tight as she looks down at her, saying nothing.

“My turn in the shower,” Ahri says, tone laced with fake innocence.

“I’m leaving. You can wait.”

And she slams the door in her face.

Ahri swallows hard, hands brushing up and down her arms at the goosebumps there, uncertain of what has summoned them, but steadily becoming _addicted_ to this sensation, into this situation she has created herself.

A ring sounds on the other side of the door and Ahri’s ears perk. Sivir must not think she can hear her, but it’s her fault she never asked if her fox ears were equipped with enhanced hearing or not.

“I’m coming, calm the fuck down,” Sivir grits and Ahri realizes she’s picked up a call while she rifles through the clothes in her closet. “I’m not _fucking_ angry.”

 _You sound pretty angry_ , Ahri thinks. Was it all because of her? She sticks around the door, leaning back against the wall opposite, listening.

“I’ll have the money _tonight_. Stop worrying.”

Ahri doesn’t hear Sivir say anything more to the person on the other line after that. She stomps around for a minute more before throws her door open again, dressed in tight-fitting darks, doing a double take at her waiting there.

Ahri can’t help herself, her tongue has gotten so loose. “Where’re you going? It’s late.”

Sivir scoffs, shaking her head at her as she pushes past. “When are you going to start paying rent, huh?”

With that, Sivir leaves the apartment, the precedent of their relationship set—the backdrop of something tense and ugly, and Ahri welcomes it.

* * *

One thing Sarah Fortune knows well is her business and where to play her cards. And with Ahri working the floor after her basic training is finished, she’s still a disaster on heels. She has had several instances where the heavy glasses she’s bussing around swan dive from her tray. She’s easily overwhelmed with large orders—just can’t get them right the first time. And she wears down so quickly, she visibly drags her feet at the prospect of having to go and perform table touches. There were only 10 tables in the whole club.

Sarah gathers Ahri into her office during a lull in the night, and Ahri figures she’s being fired, for sure. She’s sitting on the edge of her chair, her legs restlessly bouncing.

“I’ve noticed you’re having a tough time,” Sarah begins with a big sigh and a pinch of her nose as she sinks into her cushy chair.

Ahri unleashes the flood gates, the panic thrumming in her chest as she rambles, “I’m so sorry, I know. I’ll get better, I _promise_. I’ve never done _anything_ like this and it really has been getting easier, and I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’ve been working on memorizing all the drink names in my free time a—“

“Ahri. Relax.”

But she _can’t_. “ _Please_ , don’t fire me, I—I’ll just try harder. Because… you know, I’ve been sleeping right and I haven’t stayed over at all since that last time you caught me. And I—I, uh, I had an order that was eight drinks big tonight and I didn’t mess it up at _all_ and I _want_ to get better and I haven’t even shown you a hundred percent and just please give me the chance to because I’m so close, I’m _almost_ there.”

Sarah slowly blinks at her, fingers netting together in her lap as she waits, a brow quirking as silence settles between them. “Oh, you’re finished?”

“Oh god. I’m gonna throw up,” Ahri says as she keels over in her lap, her face in her hands.

“Again. Relax. I’m not firing you.”

 _Dishes_. She’s going to move her to the back to do _dishes_. Her worst nightmare next to being fired. She would do it, though. She just would have to suck it up and she’d be happy with it, but god, she’d be happier just waiting tables and looking pretty. She’ll never complain again, never look tired again, never drop another thing even if it kills her—

“I want you to move to pole. Qiyana can show you the basics. And you’re gonna stop working nights, for now. I want you here 8-5 the next three days and we’ll see where you are after, got it?”

“Oh,” Ahri gapes, deflates in relief, still aptly aware that she knows she can’t fuck this up, either, so the hope she feels isn’t without its conditions. She’s not much of a dancer, but she just hopes Qiyana is a good teacher. “Okay… okay, got it.”

“You can go home. Nice and early tomorrow, right?”

“Okay.”

Ahri stands, exhausted and so thankful at the prospect of going back to Sivir’s and passing out.

“Ahri.” Sarah says, drawing Ahri’s attention back to her before she leaves. “Take it easy. I’m not here to ruin your life. I’m going to play you to your strengths, that’s all. We’re going to find them. Alright?”

“Okay,” Ahri says again, somehow even smaller and more pathetic.

It was only a matter of time before Sarah learned that Ahri doesn’t have any strengths.

* * *

“Where’s your core? We gotta build that up, too?”

Ahri, red faced and struggling, balances on her forearms in plank position on a padded mat, every inch of her trembling, threatening to give out from under her. She couldn’t answer Qiyana’s rhetorical question even if she wanted to—she was holding her breath and tightening her muscles, feeling like she was on the verge of passing out.

“Okay, it’s kinda sad to watch and I’m bored, you can stop,” Qiyana says and Ahri falls flat on her face with a huge exhale of relief. “I’ll send you home with a little routine to build your strength because you need to do _something_.”

It had been three hours and all they had done was stretches and warm ups, but already, Ahri was exhausted. How could she handle the next two days if she was this beat? Qiyana hasn’t even come close to working up a sweat walking her through every exercise.

Ahri doesn’t get up off the mat planted down on the stage, the outside dome light that streams in making the empty club look eerie and stale. She just lays there, defeated, struggling to push through.

Qiyana leans down into her view, her expression filled with contempt. “So, what? You need a break?”

Heaving a big sigh, Ahri rolls onto her back and grimaces as she sits up, the entire stretch of her abs on fire. Part of her wants to just give up and go home, but she forces out, “No, I can keep going.”

Qiyana puts a hand out to her. “It was a trick question. You _do_ need a break. But stand up and walk it out.”

She helps Ahri to her feet and she does just that as Qiyana fetches two water bottles.

“We’ll move on to some easy dances, just watch and take notes,” Qiyana instructs.

And the way she moves, Ahri is struck more by how pretty she is, how envious she feels as Qiyana’s hips sway and how she rounds the pole with simple sweeps of commanding movement.

Qiyana talks her through everything she does, and it’s all so purposeful and confident, like she knows she looks good and no other truth can contradict that.

Ahri is painfully reminded of Kai’sa. She works herself even harder to try and grind those thoughts into dust, stretching a bit too roughly, idly wishing she would rip something.

When it’s her turn to round the pole, she spins around it with wraithful energy, bruising herself all up and down her arms and legs as she throws herself into the routine to the point where Qiyana considers her in an elongated spell of concentrated silence before ramping up the complexity of her movements. She tells her to try this and that, turn sharper there, bend her back more, remember her angles. Qiyana instructs her to watch herself in the far mirror of the club’s reflective walls so she knows what she looks like.

But Ahri can’t keep up for too long. She gets tired, gets worked to the bone until Qiyana nods her head and tells them that they’re done for the day. Ahri can tell Qiyana is preoccupied with how she performed, uncertain if she has satisfied her rigorous instructions or not. She still had two more days, so she knew she had time. She just couldn’t fuck this up.

Ahri doesn’t even rest when she gets back home. She attacks the workouts that Qiyana has given her to build her strength until her every muscle is utterly wrung out and tired, knowing she _should_ stop, but she likes the way her body burns. It’s punishingly awful and a fantastic distraction that sucks away the rest of her evening.

Sivir returns from a half shift near midnight, not even looking at Ahri splayed out on the floor, suspended into an exhausted stupor. Sivir ducks into her room and less than ten minutes later, she’s changed into a more brooding outfit and headed out the front door again.

And Ahri scrambles onto her feet to follow her—there doesn’t exist the luxury for her to think what she’s doing all the way through. She throws on her jacket over sweaty clothes and slips on her boots, tailing her a healthy distance back on wobbly, heavy legs. Her breath puffs out in thick, white clouds behind her, eyes laser focused for Sivir’s body language and making sure that she’s ready to duck and hide in case she looks back. But she doesn’t seem concerned that she’s being tailed at all.

She follows Sivir to the entertainment district on the block where they work, but Sivir walks the opposite side of the street and delves deeper past neon storefronts and digital advertisements rotating on every corner. Sivir stops at one of the many casinos that line the block, talks to someone who’s working security out front, and steps inside one of the automatic sliding doors.

Ahri scrambles after her to reestablish her line of sight, looking frantically around as an overwhelming assortment of lights and noises blast her senses. She just barely catches Sivir’s back disappearing around a corner at the back of the casino and out of sight.

Heart pounding, feeling like she should go because people are already staring at her, she so easily draws attention due to her appearance. But she’s determined. She walks briskly through slot machines and tables of people playing cards on hovering screens, the air smokey and sharp with the scent of alcohol.

Ahri wrinkles her nose and approaches the corner she saw Sivir disappear into, looking up at a staircase that leads to an upper floor. The adrenaline coursing through her lets her shoot up the stairs without taking notice of how she hurts. She’s deposited out onto a walkway that overlooks the main floor and curves all the way around it. She’s lost Sivir’s trail, so she rushes around the stretch of it, looking into each hall that the floor breaks off to, worried that she’s lost her and she’s turned another corner somewhere.

But then she _does_ see her, standing flanked by two bigger guys at the far side of the last hall. They talk and then head into a room Ahri can’t see. A little voice tells her to stop and turn around, but she ignores it. She pushes forward, feeling like she was piloting a stranger’s body as she makes a beeline towards a large, poorly lit, windowless room. There were several billard tables, a dingy bar, and people dotting the space, most immediately drawn to her as she takes the corner and stands there, dumbfounded because she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing here, but she takes a few steps inside, anyway.

And it takes the drop of a hat for someone to flank her side, another bigger guy who stinks like vodka. Ahri backs away, finding she’s already stuck in a corner, making a move to weasel her way back out, but the guy makes an obstacle of himself to stop her.

“Hey. New face. You looking for work?” He asks, seedy and a bit slurred.

“No,” Ahri replies, unable to keep eye contact as she studies the floor in slowly flaring panic.

“I got just the thing for you. How would you like getting out of this city, huh?” He presses.

“I don’t want…” She starts, the words failing her as he gets closer, one grubby mitt hooking under her jaw and turning her face up harshly to examine her. He doesn’t have a single hair on his entire head—no eyebrows, no facial hair. It makes her skin crawl.

“A new start, new people. Sounds nice, don’t it? Pretty, too. You’ll get along good with my people in the next tunnel over. I can have you on your way out in minutes. Let’s get you all set up for your trip. You thirsty?”

Numb. She can’t pull away as he starts to lead her deeper into the room.

Then, someone drags him back by the shoulder—a much shorter, much smaller person. She’s got a black hat with a flat, low-sitting bill over her brows, their hair back in a huge black and blonde ponytail.

“Back the fuck up,” she grits.

The man spits, “The fuck do you want?” He turns, getting a good look at her before his body language changes. He shrinks down from full height, no longer on the offensive, hissing down his crooked nose at her.

A glint of recognition screws up her face as she shoves him against, rougher with him. “Man, you again? No one’s taken you out back and shot you in between your skeevy fuckin’ eyes yet?”

“The fuck do you want me to do? I got quotas to meet.”

She scoffs, reaching for something tucked into the back of her pants. “You’re asking me questions? You really offering to brighten up my night, shithead?”

“Ah, fuck.” The guy spits on the floor and turns elsewhere, excusing himself from the conversation.

“Yeah, get the fuck out of here. If I even _smell_ you again tonight, I’ll send you to the fuckin’ afterlife.” She calls after him as he retreats, kissing their teeth and dropping her hand from her back. “Disgusting. Jesus, makes me fucking sick to my god damn stomach.”

Finally, they turn to Ahri with a ragged sigh, putting a cigarette up to her lips and blowing smoke as she eyes her up and down—not coldly, but with a measure of severity in their black eyes. “You should go home. Right now.”

A retort starts up, the embarrassment tight in her throat, but Ahri only stands paralyzed, unable to move as the abuse she’s put her whole body through today catches up to her in that moment and shuts her down there and then.

And she collapses—it would have been a fast fall to the floor, had the other not dove for her, incredibly fast reflexes firing off and knocking the wind out of her when they collide.

“Fuck,” her savior mutters, the bill of their hat digging into the side of Ahri’s head. “Are you on something?”

Ahri shakes her head. She’s just tired and unable to piece together exactly how she’s getting home like this. With a sweep of her eyes around the room, she doesn’t even see Sivir anymore.

“How’d you get back here, anyway?”

“I followed someone.”

“You’ve actually done something pretty stupid, you know that?”

 _Good_ , Ahri thinks, knowing she wishes it had gone worse, but only because she’s standing on the other side unhurt so far. Ahri doesn’t have all of her mind as she’s escorted out back through the now maze-like mess of hallways, through the main floor and down another stretch of hallway.

“What was all that about?” Ahri manages to ask. “Back there. What was that?”

“Gang stuff,” she responds curtly, changing the subject as swiftly as it came. “You here with anyone else?”

“No.”

Sighing raggedly, she steers them both to an exit outside with a red carpet valet—certainly not the way Ahri came in. She’s all sorts of turned around, now.

“Wait here.”

Ahri is left for a moment in the cold, the lone wind picking up and battering her.

The person returns not a minute later after talking to the coordinator at the podium. “Alright. They got a chauffeur coming around. Just tell them where you live. Don’t worry about the cost, it’s on me. Just don’t be wandering into people’s business like that, okay? _Especially_ when there’s fuckin’ loan sharks involved.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just be careful.”

And she leaves without ever even telling Ahri their name.

At work the next day, Ahri sees Sivir, expecting her to barrage her with questions asking her why she had followed her, but she ignores her just like it’s any other shift—Ahri even purposefully gets in Sivir’s way as she’s heading to the floor, flaunting all of her air-headed galore to try and get her going. Sivir steps around her with her eye roll, and it’s there that Ahri is somewhat convinced she doesn’t have a clue as to what transpired under her nose.

At least she could begin to piece together the kind of crowd Sivir associates with—a hint about a secret part of her life that Ahri can only speculate and infer about. Otherwise, Ahri is more than happy to phase that night out of her mind, the ramifications of her stupidity expelled and blocked away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it needs to be said, but seraphine is in this part briefly and i’m not stranger to the controversy around her age. she's been confirmed 20 in the kda au on her league wiki page and that's that. i understand i might have gotten more traffic here if i untagged the background sera/eve, but it’s disingenuous to leave it out. it is an arrangement between two consenting adults and it doesn’t distract from the story at hand. thanks for getting this far if you were hung up about that. 
> 
> anyway, i made fan(?)art of this fic and you can check it out [here](https://twitter.com/chilopawbi/status/1362613600066576386?s=20)! im debating on posting it as a cover image in the first chapter, but that's a fight i gotta have with me about the logistics of it because it's a huge piece of art and i don't wanna blow out and turn off mobile users who click in.
> 
> content warning for ch4: sex work, major depictions of mental illness including self-endangerment self-harm, suicide ideation, mentions of drug use and explicit sexual content with bdsm elements.

The next day, the early morning comes especially cruel and painful. Ahri can hardly move, her every muscle burning in extreme, rowdy protest. She tries a few stretches, regretful as she doesn’t gain any of her limberness back for the day.  
  
She makes it to work, looking beat up to hell and feeling like it, especially with all the new myriad of bruises she sports up and down her arms and legs.  
  
Qiyana face palms animatedly when she sees how hard it is for Ahri to walk around in her heels. “Why’re you all like _this_?”  
  
“Yesterday was tough, that’s all,” Ahri tells her half-truth.  
  
“Uh-uh. I’m not gonna be responsible for you tearing yourself in half within the first two days. You need to loosen up.”  
  
Ahri huffs hard, annoyed at herself, Qiyana, everything. “I tried. Stretching doesn’t help.”  
  
“You need to sit your ass down and drink some water, is what. Don’t stretch no more unless I specifically tell you to.”  
  
And they sit for about five minutes, sipping water and not really looking at each other. Ahri’s impatience rears up as she asks, “How long are we going to sit here, again?”  
  
Qiyana scoffs. “We’re not going to do anything today. I said what I said.”  
  
Ahri’s panic flares up. “Nothing? But, I only have these three days to show Fortune I can hold my weight.”  
  
Qiyana shrugs, stating matter-of-factly, “Tomorrow you’ll be worse. So we’ll call it a day, now. I have other shit to do.”  
  
At that, Ahri starts to panic. “No, no, please, I can’t let her think I can’t do this. She’s gonna let me go—please, we have to do _something_ , just something easy,” she babbles, looking around for an answer in front of her as of how they can keep busy. “I-I just need the hours, I can’t be sitting around, please let me work this out, I can do it. Let’s start routines again. I can do that. Let me show you, I know I can do it. I remember almost all of it.”  
  
Qiyana stands, a hand on the back of her neck as she sighs out her lungs. She gestures vaguely around, searching for the words. “Look. I didn’t say anything about you being unable to do this. I’ll tell Fortune what we’ve done so far, but it’s detrimental to do anything when you’re in this shape. And yes, I said _anything_. Anything and everything. I mean it. And I’m watching out for you, not putting you out. It’s a fine line, but there’s a difference.”  
  
It’s not what Ahri wants to hear. She still dreads the disappointment from Sarah. She can picture how she’ll pinch the bridge of her nose because of course it was something else with the new hire. How embarrassing. Useless.  
  
Ahri can’t weasel her way into convincing Qiyana otherwise once she has her sights set, so Ahri sits and cries in the corner of the club when she’s gone because she hurts and she aches and she’s tired and everything is so unfair.  
  
Back in Sarah’s office, it’s torture. Especially because it’s dead quiet. They just sit there, Ahri’s eyes on the ground as a child would who knows she’s about to be disciplined. It’s tense. Neither of them breach the silence for a long while.  
  
“How are you feeling?” Sarah finally asks, careful—deliberately slow.  
  
Ahri blurts, “You want me out, right?”  
  
Sarah takes a big, steady breath in—an even slower exhale out. “Answer the question. I wanna know.”  
  
“I feel like you should fire me. Or make me do dishes.”  
  
“That’s how you think I feel. I’m asking about you. How are you feeling, Ahri?”  
  
“I’m tired,” Ahri says, knowing it to be true without saying anything at all, despite the knot rising in her throat. She hates how it makes her tear up, how it makes her quiver with the effort of keeping it balled in. _Fuck_ , she wants to disappear, but she’s already spun out of control—it’s too overwhelming to try and hold it back.  
  
So she cries in front of Sarah Fortune, bent over her knees with her face in her hands, riding it out through smudged makeup and snot. She didn’t want to be so useless, so much trouble. It hurts so fucking much to waste her time, but she can’t stop.  
  
Sarah stands at some point, offering her a towel that Ahri takes without looking up, a poor attempt made to clean herself up.  
  
Kneeling at her side, a hand on the back of her chair, Sarah waits, watching patiently, mouth tight at the corners.  
  
Ahri wouldn’t want anyone staring while she breaks down normally, but the attention does warm her a bit, it does bring her out of the caverns of her grief just that much more so she can begin to collect herself.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ahri finally says, her voice cracking with exhaustion. “I should… I don’t have a lot of things, but I’ll empty my locker and go. I’m sorry, I know I—“  
  
Sarah interrupts her. “Ahri, I don’t know how to make it any more clear that I want you here.”  
  
She breaks back down a step, pressing the towel _hard_ against her eyes until she sees blotchy stars, her shoulders wracking anew with sobs. “You’re lying. You’re just lying.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“You don’t want me here. I can’t do anything. I’m so stupid.”  
  
Sarah, sensing she’s hit an impassable wall, begins to find a path around it. “Qiyana said you’re a natural with pole. She’s just worried about you pushing yourself too hard. You’re still gonna work here, and I’m certainly not going to waste your talent on dishes, okay? But if you need more hours, I can give that to you. I want to start slow, though, yeah?  
  
“I’ve got a compromise. I want you doing private shows. That way, you can continue to work pole and you’ll learn some lap dancing. You can make a whole lot extra if you can do hand jobs, but I never force that on my girls if they don’t want to. I want to keep you safe, ultimately. Continue to work at building your dancing up, and you don’t have to be up and down the club wearing yourself out. How about it, sweetheart?”  
  
Usually, the girls at the club could do it all no problem, but Ahri just couldn't keep up. What was her damage?  
  
But if there’s one thing she’s certain she can do, at the very least, it’s a fucking hand job.  
  
She nods her head, sniffling. “Okay. I think I can do that.”  
  
“I know you can.”  
  
“But what if this doesn’t work out?”  
  
“I’ll make it work,” Sarah replies. “It’s my job to make it work. It’s your job not to quit. Okay?”  
  
It’s her job not to quit. It’s surprisingly profound and simple. Something she’s not so easy to forget in the throes of doubt that likes to coalesce around her. So she nods again, saying with her chest, “Okay.”

* * *

Ahri lounges in the dressing room with the other girls on break, liking that she has the leisure to sit and upkeep her appearance between gigs. Ahri still worries that she’s going to be let go at any moment, but that gets pushed more and more out of her mind the longer she’s at it. And she keeps at it for two months, becoming quite popular to the point where most of her patrons request her by name. They show up like clockwork for her, piling her cache up with tips and laying compliments thick on her that she can’t ever get enough of.  
  
And it’s never a surprise what is expected of her after she enters the private rooms. She doesn’t ever feel like she’s in danger, she’s never with someone that Sarah doesn’t know beforehand, and she’s never without security close at her beck and call if she needs it.  
  
Ahri does prefer things this way, after all. Even though the dances are simple and her pole work is mediocre at best, she makes other things about her pressingly abundant to focus on: her tail, her fox ears, her voice, her scantily clad form, her lingering touches, her hips grinding against the pole, against laps, her tits pushed all the way up, and the shade on her lips. It’s a little comical how quickly they come undone in her palm, how she grinds her hips with the motion of her wrist, making eye contact and smirking that gets them every time. It keeps them coming back for a serial experience, copy and pasted, scratching an itch that she planted there to begin with.  
  
Sarah leans down onto the back of her stool, having approached quietly and meeting her eyes in the reflection of a cracked vanity mirror. “Got a request for service in room 4,” she whispers into her ear. “Nothing special, just you, sweetheart. A warning, however—this one came in with independent security, so I’ll send more of my guys for you, as well. You walk right out if you’re uncomfortable, got it? If anyone tries to stop you, you know what to do.”  
  
And Ahri nods, knowing the circumstances seem a little extraneous, but she isn’t scared yet over what was to come. And true enough, two security guys are waiting outside of room 4 in the scarcely lit hall. Ahri puts on her face, smiles up at the two guys who give her a nod, and slips behind the hanging velvet curtains into the neon pink light of a small circular room. There’s a pole in the center on a raised platform and a curved couch circling the entirety of the mini stage. Music plays through the panels lining the room, a visualizer automatically generating a light show across the digital screens that are the length of the walls. A one-way mirror looks out to the backdrop of the club dance floor on the wall opposite, the deepest vibrations of the bass unable to pierce the anti-sound tech lining the room.  
  
And there’s a woman inside, sitting on the couch with arm slung around the back of it. Ahri first notices her crossed legs, long, spiraling, and covered in mesh netting. She wears a dark color on her lips, inky black in the piercing pink light, starkly contrasted with her lustrous ivory hair. The arch of her brows are exquisite, paired with the hard, provocative cut of her jawline.  
  
She watches Ahri silently as she struts up onto the platform, catlike golden eyes dragging along her body, wanting her, undressing her and Ahri is so into it because she hardly gets lady company and this one is _hot_.  
  
Then, the woman finally says, “I recognize you.”  
  
Ahri hums, dropping down to her ankles, balancing in her five inch heels as she opens her legs and leans her shoulders back on the pole, tracing her thighs all the way to her knees. She purrs, confident, playing up the sex appeal for sex appeal’s sake. “I’m a hard face to forget.”  
  
“You were Viktor’s plaything.”  
  
At that, she takes a long pause, not having heard that name in so long. It’s like a bucket of ice water over her head. Ahri closes her legs slowly, staring searchingly at her company.  
  
“Excuse me. That was rude of me. You were his escort,” she corrects herself, as if that was the glaring issue at hand and not her dead ex-employer.  
  
Ahri stands timidly, trying to find her groove again, but it’s hard as she rounds the pole, one hand flirting with the reflective metal. “How do you know Vik?”  
  
She easily dodges the question, elusive as smoke. “You talk about him like you don’t know.”  
  
“What happened to him a few years ago? I do.”  
  
“Mm. Forgive me, darling, of course you do.”  
  
Ahri leans her shoulder on the pole. “What can I call you?”  
  
“Siren.”  
  
The name is completely unfamiliar to her, but she doesn’t remember much from those days.  
  
Ahri pushes reluctantly forward, distracting from that moment of tension as she sidles up into Siren’s lap, twisting and grinding her hips down onto nothing, but she knows it to easily distract from any conversation at hand and back in her favor.  
  
Sirens leans back, hands pulling poignantly down where Ahri expects at least a gentle, if not polite, hold on her sides.  
  
And it’s a little irritating. “Aren’t you going to touch?” She asks, miffed, already thrown off by memories she hasn’t expected to confront tonight and thwarted in her attempts to move away from that all.  
  
“You have to want me to.”  
  
Ahri dips close, divulging against the shell of Siren’s ear peeking out of platinum lavender hair, “I want you to.”  
  
“Then prove it,” Siren says.  
  
Ahri, for the second time since slipping into this room, is left stunned. She halts her grinding, sitting up on her knees in Siren’s lap, hands smoothing over her shoulders idly. “How?”  
  
“You can’t.” Siren says it so easily, it’s almost insulting. “Not like this.”  
  
Ahri scoffs. “So, you don’t want me to do _anything_?”  
  
“I didn’t say that.”  
  
Why the hell else would she get a private room with her? What was the point?  
  
Siren presses on, leaving Ahri reeling in confusion. “Why don’t you do escort work anymore?”  
  
“I just... fell out of it.”  
  
“So you weren’t affiliated.”  
  
“No, he picked me up off the streets.”  
  
A pause fills the fair as Siren considers her. “That work suits someone like you.”  
  
“I… I liked it,” Ahri says honestly, surprised at how the compliment settles warm in her chest. “I really did.”  
  
Siren leans forward at that, her shoulders slack and easy—unassuming but so _big_ in her posture. “Do you want a job?”  
  
Ahri’s heart shoots up into her throat as she eases to sit in her lap in full. “Escorting?”  
  
Siren nods. “Me.”  
  
“When?”  
  
“I want your weekends. We’ll start small. I’ll even have a contract drafted for your benefit.”  
  
Weekends were the club’s busiest times. She wasn’t sure she wanted to relinquish them. “Am I being poached?” She has heard the girls talk about the practice, seen plenty of workers come and go out of the revolving glass door of Sarah’s.  
  
Siren’s lips split into a saucy grin. “So you are familiar with how this game works. You can continue to work here if you’d like, and I’ll compensate you well for your time. If the arrangement is something we want to continue, we’ll look into finding a company to better represent you. If not, you’ll still be affiliated and we can go our own separate ways.”  
  
“That easy?”  
  
“It can be that easy.”  
  
“What’s in it for you?”  
  
Siren looks over her body appreciatively. “I’ll be toting you around.”  
  
“You don’t want to fuck me?” Ahri asks her most pressing question. Because it was definitely about the sex with Viktor.  
  
“Again, you have to want me to.”  
  
Ahri nods along, pretending like she’s got a clue, lost in the eyes but pressing on. She hasn’t the slightest idea what she was falling into this time. 

* * *

Siren likes pretty things. She has her obvious creature comforts. Her bags, her outfits, her jewelry, her accessories. It’s probably why she likes keeping Ahri around her—as a symbol of status, something elevated, a found gem that she’s polished up and now deins hers. So Ahri sits and smiles. Smiles, pours her drink, watches, crosses and uncrosses her legs—silent, subservient, _nothing_ , worn on Siren’s arm like she wears her gold, like how she flaunts her rubies and diamonds.  
  
And Siren was a powerful woman. She’s connected, always taking calls, always seeing people in a quartered-off booth at some high-end club she’s invested in, a socialite without the zest, without the bounce. She sometimes talks with people Ahri assumes are some kind of business clients.  
  
Ahri never understands the business Siren talks about when she does hash it out. It’s numbers and percentages, deals with lawyers and territories and jargon as transparent as sheet metal.  
  
All Ahri knows for certain is that Siren is intense. Ahri feels it in the room when she directs someone with a set of instructions as simple as how soon she’d like her chauffeur waiting at the valet, not to be questioned.  
  
The people at her command are plain intimidating, all women larger than life, with muscles and immaculate haircuts and impossibly grave in the face when they move to obey Siren’s every word.  
  
And men certainly fear her. They flinch under her eyes, turn white at her sneer, and grovel when she’s made it obvious she’s being inconvenienced. Ahri has to hide her lips behind a palm to keep her smirk to herself, because it’s entirely inappropriate, but she senses that her and Siren extract the same breed of amusement from such displays, especially when deserved (as Siren deems it). It’s a power trip, having helpless, wide eyes floating around the room for sympathy to eventually land on her fruitlessly when Siren signals for a nuisance to be dragged out of her sight by Illaoi or Camille.  
  
Ahri perches at Siren’s side, laying in wait for that sharp ire to be directed on her, but it never is. When she thinks about it in honest, she notices the pattern that when it’s just her and her bodyguards, Siren’s at complete ease to the point where she’s hardly even there—almost completely unavailable. Her hackles only raise when it’s another ego walking into the room that’s larger than hers, particularly when it’s a man.  
  
The intrusive idea of tempting Siren, testing her, growing bold and longing for something that stings quickly works its way into Ahri’s psyche.  
  
But Siren makes good on her promises so far. Ahri does get to sign a contract that clearly states what their simple agreement is and what she is to be paid. And it’s no small sum of money and Ahri doesn’t shy away from it—she expects it, relishes in the idea of slipping back into a life she thought long lost, especially with someone mysterious like Siren.  
  
Though Ahri can’t negotiate the contract because of her ignorance and lack of personal legal representation, she glimpses that the contract is more a gesture of good faith, no red flags that entitles Siren to her cybernetic parts, her body, _nothing_. It’s a way for her to find her footing in the arrangement, a safety net that clearly states her employment with her and protects her from anything more. She keeps her job at Sarah’s and tackles Evelynn’s work on the weekends, just as promised.  
  
When her first payment is transferred to her cache, Ahri is able to pay for internet access, _finally_. She hasn’t been connected since Viktor. And it’s like stepping into the millennia for the first time, with the news and gossip suddenly at her fingertips again. She can finally pay for her portion of rent and she begins to take the steps towards earning her worker’s wellness card so that Siren can refer her to an agency. She’s got to take some test and get a physical, but she puts it out of mind for the meantime.  
  
Unsurprisingly, no one tries to reach Ahri personally now that she’s plugged back into society at large. She had imagined at least a brief message waiting to connect to her from her parents, but no one has sent anything to her PID when she searches the floating display her wrist spits out.  
  
But she doesn’t even care about them that much. What she longs for is to hear from Kai’sa. She wants to know if she’s okay, if she still lives in that garage. She wonders if she’s taken up someone else to live with her—someone to cuddle just like they used to. Someone else to treat and spoil.  
  
When Ahri closes her eyes on Sivir’s lumpy couch and finds rest, it’s Kai’sa she sees in her dreams on top of her—a dream she has only had once before when she was living with her. Kai’sa’s fingers move inside her, her smell of sex all around her as Ahri moans and clings into her with blunt nails, grinding into her palm with feverish urgency.  
  
The shock of it leaves Ahri horrified in its wake, but it doesn’t relent, doesn’t write itself off as a one-time thing. Eventually, it’s not just Kai’sa’s fingers in repeat dreams, but it’s something strapped to her hips. No matter, it’s always with Ahri’s legs up, taking everything Kai’sa gives her and Ahri begging her for more.  
  
One time in particular, she dreams up Kai’sa absolutely ramming her into the bed, moaning with her and sensing how close Kai’sa is to coming from fucking her, alone. Ahri wakes with a start, her heart pounding and her cheeks flushed, already so close to orgasm, it leaves her confused as she pushes past her thong and finds herself soaking wet and engorged. She gets herself off, eyes screwed shut as she pictures Kai’sa kissing her, telling her how good she is, how much she wants her all while fucking her open until she convulses around that cock, the magnitude of it startling as Ahri sinks her teeth into the meat of her free palm to keep quiet as she comes so hard, she cries.  
  
Then, it’s cold nothingness as she draws out of that fantasy and back into empty reality. The reality that Kai’sa wasn’t here and she didn’t really want her, especially not in that way. She didn’t want to fight for her, didn’t want her close. And that hurts anew all over again, a too familiar pain she has almost always known that cuts as deep as the first time.

* * *

Ahri is around Siren long enough at a certain point where she learns her real name—an inconsequential moment in passing where she takes a personal call and Ahri overhears, a one-time thing that doesn’t happen again. She’s never given her permission to call her anything else, so she isn’t as vain as to think she has a right to it. It’s just another barrier preventing her from breaking through the impersonal barrier erected between them.  
  
_Evelynn_ , Ahri thinks as she studies her boss’s profile as she sips her drink, always looking so far away, she couldn’t reach her even if she touches her cheek. Ahri wonders how often she looks like that, herself—faraway, not all there.  
  
So she stares unabashedly, admiring Evelynn and her lifestyle and her posture, noticing how the lights kiss her silhouette as they bask in carefully curated shadow. No one fucked with her. No one doubted her. No one stood in her way, and if they did, they regretted it.  
  
Ahri finds herself antsy like a stiff fixture left in the long, quiet night, especially since Evelynn never lets her drink on the job, so all she has is shooting contemplative holes into her, wishing she’d at least look at her, touch her—  
  
“What’s on your mind?” Evelynn asks, some sort of invisible breaking point breached.  
  
Ahri only realizes the question is for her over the pulsing music after a muddy pause. She drags her eyes around at the semi-circle table of the other invited patrons, all of them hushedly conversing with their own paid company.  
  
Evelynn peers down their glass balcony perch at the dance floor beneath, brushing off the condensation of her drink idly with the pad of her thumb, looking as though she hasn’t said a thing.  
  
Ahri wants a lot of things. Everything. But most pressingly, “I want you to hit me,” she says simply, no grandiose, no inflection, no expectation. Just a step out of line, a shot in the dark. She wants a distraction, wants to see Evelynn curl up and release the crack of the whip she sees playing on her eyes when things get tense and dangerous, wants to elicit that excitement and feel what it’s like to ache and burn for her pleasure.  
  
At that, Evelynn turns, her unchanging expression lining up with Ahri as she searches her face.  
  
Ahri glares back, a challenge rising, the flick of her tail giving away the edge of nerves that lines her entire request. But she can’t crumble. She finally has razed something, put a fan to the flames.  
  
Evelynn puts down her drink with a clack. “Do you know what you’re asking for?”  
  
“I’ve been hit before, if that’s what you mean.” It wasn’t good, wasn’t fun, wasn’t anything she’d ever want again, but it’s how she wants to punish herself. It’s how she wants to distract from how she already bleeds. “Will you or won’t you?”  
  
A pleased grin curls along Evelynn’s lips, severe like the curve of a scimitar. “I’m very glad you asked. I’m just the type.”  
  
Ahri exhales shakily. — Evelynn takes her to the valet, arm in arm, a pair of reflective designer glasses sitting high on her cheekbones and her lovely hands sporting sharp, silver armor. The chauffeur opens her door, greeting them both, but Evelynn doesn’t even acknowledge his existence. She never acknowledges the men and her disposal.  
  
“You said you’ve done this before?” Evelynn inquires as she settles in.  
  
“Sort of,” Ahri murmurs. How she hopes her apprehension isn’t as thick on her voice as she feels it in her chest.  
  
Evelynn studies her, settling her bag into her lap. “What are you looking for?”  
  
“I want… pain.”  
  
“That’s implied, darling,” Evelynn replies patiently.  
  
Ahri flushes, embarrassed at her lack of knowledge and wondering how much of this she can really pull off. Has Evelynn already been tipped off to the fact that she didn’t know what she was talking about?  
  
“You have to be specific with me. You have an idea of what you want done to you, don’t you?”  
  
“I want your hands. On my ass.”  
  
“Spanking?”  
  
“Yes,” Ahri decides, though she had meant it differently, she doesn’t mind that outcome.  
  
“In your mind, are you bent over? On my lap? On my bed?”  
  
Ahri pictures a beat-up mattress on the floor juxtaposed with the spartan, soulless king Viktor had. “Bent over your lap.”  
  
“Do you like how it stings?”  
  
“I don’t know...”  
  
Evelynn crosses her legs, _tap, tap, tapping_ her claw armor on the body of her purse, flirting with the cells of the delicate material like it was nothing. “You don’t know?”  
  
Ahri can’t get away with it. She has to know what she wants, but when could she have ever had the opportunity to learn? That’s why she asks with a healthy dose of vexation, “Why does it matter if you’re paying me?”  
  
“Because that’s not how this is going to work.” Evelynn shuts her down. “A big part of _my_ enjoyment is knowing that _you’re_ enjoying what I do to you.”  
  
This was going to be a lot more difficult to navigate as a form of punishment, then. “Viktor never bothered to ask,” she points out, unsure of where to move from there, but feeling like it was important to mention.  
  
“I bet he wasn’t the last who never bothered to, either.”  
  
Ahri is silent at that, tongue like sandpaper clenched in between her teeth.  
  
Taking the reins once again, Evelynn steers them on. “Let’s go about it this way; what about me makes you want to hurt you?”  
  
This one was easy. “Your power.”  
  
“My power,” she repeats, the answer cordially amusing her. “Do you want to be commanded?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You want to follow my orders. Do you want me to call you names?”  
  
“I… names like what?”  
  
“A whore. A slut. Bitch.”  
  
Ahri cringes at the cold rush of disgust that she associates those names with her worst nights as a sex worker. Nothing she wants at all associated with Evelynn. It would be punishment, for certain, but she can’t bring herself to sink back to that place—not now. “No. God, not at all.”  
  
“Then you want to be my good girl? My good little fox?” Evelynn asks next, and the way she says it— _maybe_ it wouldn’t have been appealing before if it was the wrong person trying to talk to her like that, but _her_ … Ahri really likes how Evelynn’s pretty tenor timbre wears it.  
  
So her response is a simple, “Yes.”  
  
Evelynn hums and nods. “I think I already know this about you, but I’m going to ask it anyway because I never want to assume. Do you want me to _hit_ you?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“When I ask you a question, reiterate my question in your answer so I know you’re _exactly_ aware of what I’m asking you. Do you want me to hit you?”  
  
“I do want you to hit me,” Ahri reaffirms.  
  
Pleased, Evelynn says, “You don’t always have to give me those long answers, but I’ll ask them of you when I want them, especially when I’m looking for your consent. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes, I understand.”  
  
Satisfaction purrs in Evelynn’s throat as she removes her glasses for the first time and folds them into her bag. “Such a good girl, you learn quickly.”  
  
Ahri finds herself genuinely enjoying this negotiation, especially being a _good girl_ for her. She might be into this more than she intended, greedily into it for something that both burns and soothes her. The possibility this could be both for her was thrilling.  
  
“It can be hard, learning an arrangement like this. Are you feeling comfortable with this so far?”  
  
Nodding, Ahri relaxes a bit into her answer. “I am.”  
  
“Do you want me to ask you more questions about what you like or are you starting to understand what I’m trying to do?”  
  
“I’m starting to understand.”  
  
“Did you have any questions for me right now?”  
  
“Yes,” Ahri says, taking a moment to look out the window at the passing vehicles on the highway. “What can I expect when we get to wherever it is we’re going?”  
  
“We’re headed to my penthouse. I’ll show you when we get there. I have all sorts of leathers, ropes, whips, paddles—many, many toys. This conversation doesn’t have to stop when we get there. I can actually guarantee you that it won’t. We might not get to anything tonight, but I do want to make sure we get to know each other a little better.”  
  
Ahri finds such relief in that. They aren’t running on a ticking clock. She didn’t feel pressure to perform when she wasn’t ready to.  
  
“Any other questions?”  
  
Considering, contemplating, Ahri figures she’s only got surface level questions until Evelynn shows her more. “How did you get into all of this?”  
  
Evelynn pulls her shoulder up in a smooth shrug. “It’s a hobby of mine.”  
  
“Then why _me_?”  
  
“You’re the one that asked, darling. While I certainly wasn’t expecting it, I’m glad to oblige. It’s something for me to focus on that isn’t work and I enjoy it.”  
  
Of course she brought it up. She didn’t want to act as a prized statue, as a fancy wine spigot, an empty human laugh track. “I just want to be... useful.”  
  
It was the wrong choice of words for Evelynn and it churns sour in her stomach at the genuine sneer she gives. “See, now I’m rethinking this because you don’t sound so sure about all of this when you talk like that. Do you or don’t you _want_ me to dominate you?”  
  
There’s a hint of that sting. And Ahri chases it hard, leaning into it, _obsessed_ with it. Breathless, she calls out, “I do.”  
  
“Answer the question in full, pup.”  
  
_Pup_. That’s never been something she had been called. And Ahri likes it. It’s embarrassing, how it makes her clench, how she can’t quite sit still at the revelation.  
  
Of course Evelynn glimpses the effect it has on her, reads it off her and files it away, waiting.  
  
“I want you to dominate me,” she says.  
  
“Good. I need something from you right now before we go further.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I want a word that you’re not going to accidentally say when we’re playing, something that’s going to tell me that you want to check in. You’re going to tell me what you want it to be and I’ll learn it. When you say it, we’ll stop what we’re doing, no questions asked.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Do you have something like that in mind?”  
  
Something she’s not accidentally going to say… something benal. Something that’s sticking to her mind, peaking out at her from memories she’s tried shutting out.  
  
Swallowing the knot in her throat, Ahri chooses her word. “Earthquake.”  
  
“Very good.”  
  
And it’s the structure that Ahri likes—knowing what to expect, knowing _how_ everything was to play out, the unpredictability shoehorned out of it— _that_ is what appeals to her the most. 

* * *

Ahri knows that Evelynn doesn’t partake in anything modest by definition, but she can’t help but think she was under-representing what exactly she had at her disposal in her imagination.  
  
“Mm. Real leather. My good little fox has an eye for it,” Evelynn coos into her ear.  
  
Ahri arches her back into her, hands stroking over a stretched piece of black hide over a thin, padded paddle. It’s so nice, the smell fresh and clean but musty in a way that tickles her in all the right ways. And there’s so much of it. So many variants, so many items she couldn’t even describe the use of, phallic, bulbous, leather-clad and more. She hadn’t expected to be so infatuated with the aesthetic of it all, the comfort of its expansive selection, ready for her to partake in at her leisure.  
  
Evelynn was rich. The kind of rich Ahri can’t parse—the kind of rich that somehow has access to real animals and their byproducts whereas Ahri hasn’t even so much as seen a dog in recent years.  
  
“It’s so nice… it’s just… pleather feels nothing like this,” Ahri explains, shaking out of her thoughts a bit.  
  
“There are variants of pleather that have gotten remarkably close. Look, here,” Evelynn gestures for her to come close to a hanging series of belts, running her fingers through the straps and offering one out to her. “Feel the back of this.”  
  
Ahri draws the back of her fingers over the material, sighing in content. “It’s soft.”  
  
“If the fabric is unlined and the back doesn’t feel just like that, that’s the easiest way to tell if it’s fake. Alternatives also tend to flake, chip, and peel. Real leather won’t.”  
  
Ahri nods, brushing the flat side of her nails over the material again and again, wondering what it feels like pressed up against other parts of her body—what it feels like to have it dig into her.  
  
“May I touch your ears?” Evelynn asks suddenly, surprising Ahri. She’s never once asked for to touch her outside of taking her arm or politely brushing her shoulders. And it’s just so nice to be asked. Most people didn’t, especially when it came to her tail. She _hated_ her tail being touched. She’s been yanked around by it too much taking it doggy style, been sore up her whole spine where the mechanisms connect to muscle and bone.  
  
“Yes,” she replies, vibrating at the seams, so relieved that Evelynn wants to know her a little better in this way, because she does carry residual pride about her appearance and she wants to be appreciated for it.  
  
And although she’s expecting it, although she’s given Evelynn explicit permission, although she aches for it, Ahri gives a full body flinch out of reflex when Evelynn’s hands near her face, swift and unassuming. Her heart kicks into a few heavy laden beats before she quickly tunes out of the flash of panic. It’s a simple slip up—she knows she’s safe, of _course_ she was. Evelynn wasn’t trying to hit her now, not until she asked her to. It was so stupid of her.  
  
However, immediately after it happens, Evelynn freezes, considering her for a moment longer as her hands draw back, eyes studying her intensely.  
  
Beyond embarrassed, Ahri flushes and wills the moment to fly by quicker.  
  
“May I?” Evelynn asks again, gentle.  
  
“Sorry. Yes, you can.”  
  
“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
Ahri doesn’t manage a response past the tightness in her throat.  
  
Evelynn reaches around the back of her head instead, pinching the flaps of her ears lightly, feeling up and down the length, appraising them like one would a lump of gold. “They’re very nice. Very much like the real thing. Ear leather isn’t often used, but it’s always a treat when I do find it. This is a close next best. It’s good work.”  
  
Ahri hums, eyes heavy as Evelynn’s nails scratch at the base of her ears, leaning hard into her palms, relishing in it, as meager as it was. She’s remarkably touch-starved, brought to bleary-eyed nirvana as Evelynn gently scrapes her fingers across her scalp.  
  
When Evelynn goes to pull back, Ahri latches onto the front of her blouse—a desperate, silent plea, a step out of line, and everything else in between.  
  
Evelynn understands. She continues to pet her, slightly smitten at the pleasure Ahri exudes.  
  
Ahri starts to breathe a little faster, looking back at her with simmering eyes, wanting more but unable to bring her desires to her lips for fear of losing it all—fear so familiar and unresolved, the knife that has cut her soul in half remains, staved in and preventing her from the bliss of bleeding out into nothing.  
  
Maybe Evelynn senses this. Maybe she knows they have to move, they have to budge from this standstill before it threatens to swallow them whole. She asks, “Would you like to see my wardrobe?”  
  
Ahri nods, eager to look at more of her fineries. A distraction, a treat, spoiled in her own right.  
  
And it’s all designer, worn once, an outfit for every occasion past. It’s all so beautiful, so silky, excellently tailored. Leathers and furs and materials she didn’t even know the names of line the walls of the biggest walk-in closet she’s ever seen. And it only folds out to be bigger at the press of a button.  
  
Viktor didn’t care for fashion. But the way Evelynn does excites Ahri. It gives them that one shared beat of interest. Though Ahri could never afford it on her own, she was coming back into the loop of things, reacquainting herself with the styles and brands. It’s a luxury she sorely missed, a luxury she never wants to be without again.  
  
Ahri presses her face into a gorgeous maroon fur-lined coat, finding that it smelled so starkly like Evelynn. One of her favorites, perhaps. Ahri can’t ascertain the individual characters in its body the smell, but it tickles her nose, fills her head with its complex lattice of scents, and makes her feel warm.  
  
“Can I try this on?” Ahri asks, figuring she’s already gotten personal with it, but Evelynn has been watching her without comment and hasn’t minded her handsy approach this far.  
  
“Go ahead, love.”  
  
Ahri really likes Evelynn’s nicknames. She slides into fur trim and heavy, hugging fabric, admires her projected image in various angles at the viewing corner. The coat nearly swallows up her body, her arms not quite long enough to make it out of the sleeves.  
  
Evelynn says out of the blue, “You know, I’m not a stranger to playing with people who use BDSM as a way of coping.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Ahri asks softly, becoming even more absorbed with the image of herself dropping to her ankles and pooling the coat at her forearms as a means of looking exceptionally distracted.  
  
“People who partake come to it for a whole variety of reasons. Some do it to reclaim something they’ve lost.”  
  
Ahri glances over her shoulder at her, our for something not immediately apparent, empty in how she resonates in utter silence with those words. She hones back on the jacket, admiring the lining because she doesn’t want to _think_. This all already doesn’t even make sense to her—nothing ever makes sense, so she’s stopped trying to find meaning in most walks of life. So she doesn’t respond. Evelynn takes the hint.  
  
“I’ll have your measurements taken before you go,” Evelynn says instead. “If you find something you like, I’ll have it fitted for you.”  
  
“Really?” Ahri asks, eyes wide as she gawks over at her.  
  
“Certainly. I never go back on my word.”  
  
Still donning the coat, Ahri weaves through the racks excitedly, pulling out another piece that catches her eye. She folds open the fabric, and to her surprise, she touches something damp and sticky that makes a chill run down her spine.  
  
She draws back, blinking down at her hand at something crimson brown smudged against her skin.  
  
“How embarrassing. That should have been thrown out,” Evelynn says without inflection, upon Ahri in an instant to pluck away the garment from her. As quickly as Ahri glimpsed it, it was gone.  
  
Ahri stares at her hand, shifting the pads of her digits together and crushing the damp tackiness of the material in between them, fascinated with how it rolls up and leaves a reddish stain on her skin. She tastes iron on the back of her tongue, her eyes watering at the sharp, metallic tang in the air.  
  
She’s still transfixed on it when Evelynn returns, not too long after she’s left her.  
  
“Is this blood?” Ahri asks just above a whisper.  
  
Evelynn hooks a hand around her waist, jogging Ahri’s brain into hyperdrive as she jerks her out of the closet. “Let’s get you to the bathroom,” she says.  
  
“Bathroom?” Ahri repeats, trying to figure out how to think, how to properly move one foot in front of the other.  
  
Ahri is led to a large porcelain sink in an immaculate white fixture bathroom, the coat shucked off her shoulders by Evelynn and tossed aside. Ahri focuses vividly on every pass of skin they share, fire raised at each point of contact as it rakes across her, the poorly veiled hurriedness of it exciting and new and confusing and worrying.  
  
Evelynn throws on the faucet for her and Ahri throws her hands under the stream, confused at how weirdly overbearing all of this is as suds bubble up from the soapy water that’s dispensed.  
  
Then it’s Evelynn’s hands over hers, scrubbing hard against her skin after the stain has vanished to the point where Ahri winces and clenches her teeth at the friction, dealing with it, watching Evelynn’s dead focused expression over her shoulder as subtly as she can manage as her rings dig into her, as her nails scrape across her palm, and her knuckles shift and creek.  
  
Ahri breathes hard, finally forcing out, “It’s gone. It’s clean.”  
  
And Evelynn stops, holding onto her so tight, Ahri doesn’t know which of them is the one shaking. Evelynn pulls away first, planting one wet hand on Ahri’s shoulder, turning her to face her swiftly.  
  
Then she’s checking her face, her hair, her clothes, feeling, searching, eyes scanning so fast, pulling at her, picking her apart and suspicious of any fold of clothing that could be hiding another offending speck of red.  
  
“Siren?” Ahri whispers, finding this sort of behavior so strangely familiar. There’s no response, only more frantic searching. “Siren…?” She tries again, a bit weaker, but she has an idea of what she has to do. Ahri hesitates, forlornly stricken with this familiar burden as she raises her palms, still wet, to either side of Evelynn’s face, trying to anchor her back from wherever she’s gone, just like she had done for Kai’sa a perceived lifetime ago.  
  
And she does stop, still hard in her expression, only momentarily borrowed. They meet eyes, the corners of Evelynn’s mouth tight, her breaths fast and shallow. She swallows audibly, the muscles of her jaw tight, flexing underneath Ahri’s touch.  
  
“Hey,” Ahri says so gently, it barely registers in her ears. “I’m okay. It’s all gone. There’s no more.”  
  
For a beat, she doesn’t seem to break through. Evelynn drops her gaze again, hands roaming down (slower, a hint more thoughtful, a blind leap just to make certain that it’s as she says) but Ahri steps closer, making it more difficult to get a good view, taking away the option as it stood for her to go back the way she came.  
  
And Evelynn finally closes her eyes, a big, shaky sigh rolling up her chest and out her nose, a slow, hissing leak. Ahri considers her with furrowed brows, chanting the mantra of her prospective return gently as many times as it takes, “There’s nothing there. It’s gone, it’s gone…”  
  
The minutes stretch on just like that, suspended in the rhythm of it, the water still running until Evelynn has the mind again to reach and switch it off.  
  
“That was unbelievably messy of me,” Evelynn murmurs, her head sinking to rest against the crown of Ahri’s head. “I’m not normally like that.”  
  
Ahri swallows around the dry, grating sandpaper of her tongue, fingers ghosting down the regal cut of Evelynn’s jaw. “If that’s messy to you, then I’m fucking catastrophic.”  
  
Evelynn honest to god chuckles at that, though it’s short lived—only a few bumps long. “I owe you an apology.”  
  
“You can kiss me, instead.”  
  
Pause, starkly quiet and vivid—Ahri tenses, thinking she’s certainly fucked up, crossed some unacceptable boundary. Evelynn pulls back, studying her face with warm golden eyes for a contemplative beat. An offending blush fires across Ahri’s cheeks as she can feel Evelynn’s breath flirt with her eyelashes.  
  
Evelynn asks, “You want me to kiss you? After all of that?”  
  
“ _Please_ ,” Ahri breathes. She doesn’t want to relinquish this beat of scarce intimacy. It’s like Ahri just _seen_ Evelynn for the first time, curtains thrown back to gruesome, unadulterated honesty. She wasn’t perfect. It was more comforting than Evelynn knew. She grabs a handful of her blouse in a white-knuckled vice grip.  
  
“You’re not angry? Or disgusted?”  
  
Ahri shakes her head, because surely there exists a damn good reason why one of her outfits was covered in blood.  
  
“You _should_ be,” Evelynn distantly whispers, bending down to level their eyes, closer.  
  
“As long as you’re touching me, I don’t fucking care what you do to me.”  
  
Evelynn plants both of her hands on either side of Ahri on the counter behind her, locking her in, staring down at her mouth unmistakably. “You should care.”  
  
“I should be a lot of things. But I just want you, Siren.”  
  
And those are magic words, summoning forth action where there has been unsteady, quivering rest.  
  
Evelynn’s lips meekly brush her own, innocuous in its simple innocence, Ahri’s breath stolen at the tentative, timid nature of it. Ahri swallows down an outright moan as Evelynn delves deeper in the next stroke of their mouths, simultaneously spiraling Ahri somewhere overwhelmed and underserved, starving for the closeness—she wants words of affirmation in her ears, good feelings embracing her all around, she wants to goddamn suffocate in troves of unfettered passion and heavy-handed desire. She wants it so quick and swift to swallow her whole, to wring her into dust, nothing left of her but the residual pulse of a lingering love that churns butterflies in her stomach day in and out.  
  
Ahri cards her nails through Evelynn’s hair. Her fingers dig into the muscle that stretches down the back of her neck, greedily working her lips into pillowy soft lips (Evelynn is so receptive—she groans, pressing their bodies more urgently together. Does she have a clue how much she wants this, _needs_ this?) blissed out at how it warms her, clears her mind, how it sends her high and knocks her off her feet all at once.  
  
Ahri drops her jaw the instant she feels Evelynn’s tongue skate across her bottom lip, wet heat flooding her mouth and hooking around her teeth. The kiss delves into something strikingly sloppy, straight up stupid from how good it feels, Ahri’s every thought wiped away by firm, wet swirls around her tongue. Evelynn tastes sharp like drama, cigarette ash with a wink. It’s addictive, steadily not being fed enough as her appetite for the taste grows.  
  
Ahri notices the point of Evelynn’s canines, dizzy at the revelation as Eve bites down on the tensed muscle of her tongue gently, rousing her further because biting _anywhere_ really works for her and for a moment, they make blurry, too-close eye contact and Ahri _whimpers_ into Evelynn’s mouth as she lets up her clamp on her.  
  
Feeling the kiss catapult back into something so unrefined, so unlike how Ahri has imagined, it summons a gravelly hum from the back of her throat, has her throwing her tongue harder into Evelynn’s mouth, has her pressing until it’s numb. Her knees are weak, her head lulls, and every inch of her is so warm in the suddenly stifling space.  
  
Evelynn’s hands grip Ahri’s hips, possessive and curt. The kiss breaks away into laborious, hot gasps for air. Evelynn’s decisive mouth falls down to Ahri’s neck, sucking and licking, humming like she likes what she tastes there. And Ahri folds her head to the side, closing her eyes and squirming because she’s so god damn sensitive, her hips jogging into Evelynn when she finally flirts with the idea of her teeth on her. The anticipation has Ahri breathing so much louder and faster at the mere prospect of it, has her keening and pressing and sighing and— _there_ , the prick comes so sweet from the lovely heat of Evelynn’s grinning mouth as a whine drizzles out of Ahri’s throat, a near painful flood of arousal rushing down to her clit. She braces back onto the counter, spreading her legs to invite Evelynn closer to take her fill as her dress rides up her thighs. Evelynn then idly scrapes her teeth along her willing canvas, drawing out the next bite, measuring, panting—  
  
“Siren, please don’t tease me,” Ahri breathes. “Mark me more, _please_.”  
  
Smug, dripping charisma and rightly satisfied, “I love that my good little vixen is so polite,” Evelynn purrs.  
  
Evelynn obliges as Ahri gasps, every sink of teeth sounding heavy, pitched breaths from her, maddeningly hot at her core as she grinds against Evelynn’s hips, reduced to little mewls and loving that Evelynn takes her most torturous, sweetest time with her.  
  
“Mm. Turn around. I want you to see how you look,” Evelynn commands once she lets up and inspects her work, tongue darting around her lips like a pleased, fat cat.  
  
Ahri takes this brief respite to catch her breath, not putting trust in her legs and relying on her palms to keep her upright. She turns, eyes drawn to her reflection—she notes her messy hair, her kiss bruised lips smeared with Evelynn’s color, the marks along her neck that are already starting to bloom beautiful reds and purples. Her complexion is dusted lusty pink, the lids of her eyes heavy over sky blue irises, accentuated by the eyeliner she drew this morning, still in pristine condition.  
  
It’s entrancing, the look she gives herself, love drunk off of Evelynn’s touch and aching for more. Over her shoulder, she watches Evelynn brush away her blonde hair from the column of her neck and continue at her leisure with open-mouthed, sweltering kisses and lovebites, her lipstick still immaculate. “You’re drop dead gorgeous,” she says right up to her, a soul-deep shiver crawling down Ahri’s spine. “I want to wear you like a coat.”  
  
Ahri’s whole body draws tight like bow, arching into her as she swallows, managing in a shaky, soft voice, “I want you to fuck me so bad, Siren.”  
  
Evelynn’s golden eyes flare, highly volatile and receptive as she digs her nails into Ahri’s ass, meeting her gaze in the mirror. She stands up to full height, turning into her fox ear so husky and hot, “Say it again.”  
  
Embarrassed, working through the gymnastics around her sparse, beaten-down pride, Ahri whimpers, “I want you to fuck me.” Vulnerable, needy, desperate—  
  
“ _Again_.”  
  
Ahri crumbles, frustrated and panting. “Fuck me, please, fuck me— _fuck_ , I can’t stop thinking about your hands on me, please, I want you, please, _please fuck me please_ ,” she begs, wondering if she sounds as pathetic and rambly and out of her mind as she feels.  
  
Evelynn bites her bottom lip, breathing faster with her, affected by the display in such a way that has Ahri reeling. “How does my good girl want me?”  
  
Ahri stands a little straighter, feeling for one of Evelynn’s wrists blindly behind her. She scrambles to bunch the folds of her skirt higher up her hips, exposing herself, drawing Evelynn to reach around her right to the junction between her thighs, the motion shy, steadily gauging Evelynn’s reaction in the mirror.  
  
“You want me right here?” Evelynn coos, thick and gravelly, taking the reins and easily sliding under the band of her thong, parting her sticky, wet heat, fingers quickly smeared with her arousal. Evelynn sighs a pleased, luscious sigh. “It’s not a question of whether or not you’re ready for me, is it? Just when I’m going to give it to you.”  
  
Ahri tries to jog her hips into the length of her digits, but Evelynn doesn’t give her firmness nor purchase. The frustration wells at the corners of Ahri’s eyes, banded tight in her throat. Ahri can’t fucking stand it. She stamps one of her high heels down, the click of them echoing off of the fixtures in the room, hissing out, “Siren, _please_.”  
  
“You just sound so pretty when you beg, you’ve made a gutton out of me,” Evelynn says, teeming with mirth as she plants a kiss into her hair. “I want to see you strip and I want you in my bed.” She draws her hand out of her thong, making a show out of licking her honied hand clean.  
  
Ahri gulps, the searing heat of her cunt unbearable and unfair and it’s too cruel, being made to wait, but she bites her tongue and bares it. She shimmies out of her skirt and out of her top, shouldering out of her bra, struggling to keep it tasteful and not like she’s ripping clothes off her body and sprinting to bed as fast as possible. She’s successful in performing a more mystique effect as she rolls down her thigh-high stockings. They crumple to the floor. She steps out of the heels and the stockings, dainty, feeling every bit as desired as Evelynn hangs on to her every movement, looking at her like she’s parched.  
  
Elated, Ahri smiles coquettishly, turning to loop her arms around Evelynn’s shoulders, having relinquished 2 inches to her and making up the difference as she pushes up onto the balls of her feet and kisses her again.  
  
They move to Evelynn’s bed in the next instant, lip locked and listless, finding herself pressed wonderfully between Evelynn and the silky comforter, drawn deep into sensation and hyper aware of her hands. She feels so spoiled and dazed and bleary-eyed at the relief thrust against her in heavy, scouring grips.  
  
“You were wasted on Viktor,” Evelynn says in between worshipful kisses like she is christening every inch of her, working down her body, tongue sparking white hot fire right against her skin. “No man deserves you. They just don’t fucking deserve you,” she breathes, claiming the jut of her hip with a possessive scrape of her teeth.  
  
Ahri finds herself swept up in the sentiment, feeling so full, so important, so desired, so loved, squirming and so tense from her teasing, her clit throbs with sweltering need.  
  
“Do you want my mouth down here, love?” Evelynn asks, her chin brushing over the untrimmed, coarse black hairs there.  
  
Ahri nods enthusiastically. “Your fingers too.”  
  
And she isn’t made to wait much longer. Ahri gasps at the first flat pass of her tongue, melting into the delicious relief, finally worked over like a persistent knot in her neck, but only by sympathetic proximity.  
  
Evelynn moans, collecting her slick on her tongue in ravished laps and swallowing. Ahri sits up to watch, uncertain of what to do with her restless hands until the tip of Evelynn’s tongue prods inside her and she fists her platinum lavender hair out of reflex.  
  
Her fingers dip inside next (two or three, Ahri couldn’t really tell), firm and coordinated where the bulk of her tongue had been good but aimless. Ahri takes her so easily, no resistance or pinch, just nice strokes against the engulfing velvet of her pussy.  
  
It quickly becomes apparent that Evelynn isn’t interested in making her wait or beg any more—she doesn’t even have to ask before she’s fucking her eagerly. Ahri’s toes curl and her head falls back onto the comforter as she tries to bring her hips down harder into her palm, any semblance of rhythm faltering as Evelynn sucks her clit into her mouth.  
  
It’s all of Ahri’s effort not to skyrocket so quickly to release, but it’s hard when Evelynn lets her steer her head and rut her against her tongue and fingers until she’s seeing stars and singing out to the ceiling.  
  
And then, her pitched gasps fall quiet, her thighs sealing around Evelynn’s head, her nails digging into Evelynn’s scalp as she crests the summit of her ecstasy and crashes over, spilling white hot arousal in pulsing, encompassing waves with one long, reedy cry. Her cunt greedily sucks in her fingers and clenches around her rhythmically as every last bit of her drifts away into wondrous orgasm.  
  
As swiftly as it drew upon her, so does over sensitivity. Ahri can’t exactly put articulate words out past her pinched gasps for air, resorting to a gentle hand against Evelynn’s forehead to stop her. Her lips release her clit with a colorful, wet smack and her fingers draw out of her.  
  
“Did you come?” Evelynn asks, hot and breathless against her inner thigh.  
  
She can’t help but think that the answer to that was quite obvious. “Yeah, I did,” Ahri manages to draw the words of her lips like silk, lazy and soft, so high up on it it’s a wonder she’s still tethered down in this plane.  
  
At that, Evelynn pushes up onto her palms, laser focused on her as she licks her lips clean of what’s left of Ahri lingering there. She climbs up her body until she’s hovering—so nice and heavy above her, Evelynn’s lips smile sweetly against her ear, most lovely and poisonous as she asks, “Who told you that you could come?”  
  
Ahri chokes back a moan, sensing the trouble she’s in and chasing it _hard_. “No one told me I could come.”  
  
“You took that from me. You didn’t ask if you could come, I didn’t tell you that you could come, so you stole it. Do you know what I do to pups who take my things from me?”  
  
Ahri only gasps as she’s pulled up, finding herself across Evelynn’s lap ass up, face down in the comforter, tail tucked as close to her body as it can possibly be, ears back all the way against her head. “ _Oh god_ ,” she breathes and she’s so turned on all over again, because yes, yes, she wants it—  
  
The first strike is thunderous—not blisteringly hard like she’s expecting, but full palmed with good placement. She jumps, surprised at the moan she lets out, the tips of her ears burning at how embarrassed and exposed she feels, but so, _so_ into it. She arches her hips higher, panting and dizzy over the anticipation of the next one.  
  
And it happens, swift and punishing and cuttingly hard on the cheek opposite the initial strike and Ahri grunts, shivering out the tension, the ground under her spinning at the sting. And _fuck_ , she’s getting hit, hands flashing on her with bone-deep relief, even if it’s superficial.  
  
“You’re being so good for me, taking your punishment.”  
  
Ahri moans, _loving_ how she’s Evelynn’s good girl, her good fox. She’d do anything for her as long as she praises her like that, even in the middle of her _punishment_.  
  
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Evelynn grits the question through smiling teeth.  
  
Ahri can hardly talk, her tongue is twisted, her mouth drooling, tense in her every muscle and wanting it, loving every stretch of attention Evelynn treats her with. She whines, wiggling her hips for more.  
  
Ahri jolts as Evelynn’s hand wracks her with more cruel purchase—coupled, throupled, quadrupled mean spankings, right on the meatiest parts of her ass, each louder and more stingy red than the last. When she gives her a break, Ahri finally lets herself breathe again, unclenching and quivering.  
  
“Answer me when I talk to you,” Evelynn snaps curtly— _coldly_. “What do you have to say?”  
  
No, no, no, she needs to be her good girl and she’s upset her and she’s angry with her and she’s willing to do anything to get back in a positive light. But she struggles. “I don’t—Siren, I don’t know I—“  
  
Evelynn interrupts her. “I want an apology. I want you to say you’re sorry for stealing from me.”  
  
Three more hits, alternating, hard and strict, has Ahri’s cunt beading shamelessly down her thighs.  
  
“I’m s-sorry, Siren,” Ahri chokes out, the adrenaline knocking in and making her a bit more coherent, it even stops her from shaking, has her heart beating faster. “I’m _sorry_ —for stealing.“  
  
“Good. You’re going to take 20 more spankings each check for me, do you understand? Then you won’t ever steal my things from me again”  
  
“Yes, Siren, you’re right, I understand, I’ll take them for you, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,” she babbles.  
  
“Good girl, Ahri. That’s a good girl.”  
  
There it is. Ahri shudders, letting out a jagged moan, it soothes her so violently.  
  
Her ass takes more of a beating, and Ahri eventually doesn’t mumble anymore, only gasping and jolting after every strike. Eventually, she falls off into silence, humming and growing distant until she’s utterly consumed in unabashed euphoria—a cool balm right to the gaping wound in her soul. It’s like a big hit of scratch, with none of the sharpness, none of the hurtful heart palpitations, none of the electrifying energy, just the good, dizzy spin of the room and the energy without the sinking, deep-set bite of her every neuron firing off.  
  
A handful of particularly good hits later, it all starts to fall off in intensity, more a combination of grabbing and scratching her butt coupled with the occasional strike, but never harder than the last.  
  
Someone moves hair from the front of her face and tucks it behind her ear. It doesn’t come as a surprise, but it leaves Ahri impossibly pleased. She likes it. She giggles, girlish and light, pushing up into the hand for more.  
  
“Can you hear me, baby?” Evelynn asks for the third time.  
  
Ahri gives what she thinks is a nod, happy to just sit and exist and float on this feeling forever.  
  
“Good girl. I’m trying to bring you back, okay? It’s been about ten minutes.”  
  
Ahri nods, uncertain of what she means, but if it’s Evelynn, she really doesn’t care. The total release is so freeing and emboldening to her with Evelynn’s hands on her ass, massaging and gripping and patting and petting and Evelynn even somehow has something cold and silky that she rubs into her skin. Eventually, her position switches from bent over Evelynn’s legs to face first into her collarbones. Then, she’s gathered into her lap after she has a blanket over her shoulders, Evelynn’s arms wrap around her and she feels safe—totally cocooned, if a bit squished.  
  
Then, it all comes down and falls away. The higher headedness fades into resounding, gaping emptiness. Too familiar and desolate. Too normal and numb and grounded and it constricts her chest and her throat.  
  
The sob that tears through her comes as a brisk shock, muffled into Evelynn’s shoulder.  
  
And it’s so fucking unfair. Why can’t she feel like that forever? Was that something most people felt? Was it a taste of a normalcy she has never known? Why was there fundamentally so much wrong with her? If things were different, would she still be with Kai’sa, taking drugs and chasing that exact state of mind with her until they both wasted away into nothing?  
  
Kai’sa. She probably was still taking drugs. She probably overdosed again. Of course she couldn’t stop chasing a feeling like that when all she had was Ahri. It’s so unfair, but Ahri wasn’t fucking scratch. It’s so fucking _unfair_.  
  
It’s already embarrassing enough to cry, especially after such amazing sex, but Ahri doesn’t know what else to do with herself. She’s got Evelynn’s shoulder all damp and snotty and sweaty, but she doesn’t cry forever, especially since Evelynn rocks her slowly back and forth, her arms sealed tight around her, kisses placed in abundance on her forehead and the base of her fox ears as she tells her that she’s alright.  
  
Ahri feels remarkably loved. She feels like something truly precious. She wants to be held forever, cradled and coddled and kissed.  
  
“Ahri, doll, I’m going to get you a towel and some water. I’ll return as quickly as I can. Alright?”  
  
She was going to go get those things for her. Ahri nods, the cold emptiness creeping in, but staved off. She could wait one minute. Anything more, she wasn’t sure she could stop from crying again.  
  
But true to her word, Evelynn returns with a towel for her face, cleaning her up and making sure she’s had enough to drink before she scoops her back into her arms again and the both of them lay down with Ahri as the little spoon.  
  
“You were so incredible. You did such a good job,” Evelynn whispers to her and Ahri closes her eyes and has a hard time believing her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d enter subspace so easily. It’s something I should have talked to you about before, but I got caught up because I’ve never had a sub get there on spanking alone so quickly… I also didn’t plan on actually doing a scene tonight. That’s not an excuse, but it’s my fault if you’re feeling confused.”  
  
“Subspace?” Ahri repeats simply, too tired to pick it apart.  
  
“That was so irresponsible of me. Fuck,” she says, pausing to select her words. “Subspace is like a controlled fight or flight response—lots of adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins. It’s your body’s attempt to protect itself because we trick it into thinking it’s in a dangerous situation because the high is very desirable.”  
  
It was nice in the moment, but right now, “I feel like shit.”  
  
“I know. Is there anything else I can do for you to help you be more comfortable?”  
  
“Don’t leave.”  
  
Evelynn nods, the motion felt more at Ahri’s shoulder more than anything. “Okay.”  
  
“Please don’t leave me,” Ahri sobs, swallowing it back so it doesn’t spiral out of control.  
  
The arm around her grows tighter as she’s pulled more securely to Evelynn’s front. “I’m not going to leave.”  
  
And she doesn’t—not for the rest of the night. Evelynn does sit up to strip down to her underwear, but she’s back upon her in an instant and spooning her close, much to Ahri’s relief.  
  
Sleep takes her, then, reminiscent of cold winter nights spent pushed up to a red hot radiator with two strong, protective arms around her.

* * *

It should come as no surprise that Ahri wasn’t the only sparkling gem Evelynn has hoarded, and a stint of jealousy rears its ugly head when she first meets Seraphine at the penthouse.  
  
It’s a normal day, at first, as Ahri waits alone in the loft, the afternoon turning late and moody. She mulls over a glass of cold sparkling water as the elevator chimes it’s arrival to the floor. She stands, rehearsed in how she goes through the motions of greeting her patron.  
  
And someone else steps out of the elevator with a duffle and a visor hat, Evelynn nowhere to be found.  
  
“Hello! You must be Ahri,” is the first thing Seraphine says to her, and she’s nothing but polite and cheery as she introduces herself with some kind of spiel that Ahri tunes out.  
  
The other first that Ahri notices is that Seraphine wears blue in her hooded eyes so naturally. Not like Ahri, who’s had her iris color modified to try and look _that_ pretty. Ahri wonders, bitterly, if they’re fake like hers.  
  
“Uh, so! I was told to set stuff up. Did you want to watch me do that?” Seraphine asks, an edge of nerves coming out as she fingers the strap of her duffle awkwardly. “Or I can go ahead and do it myself, whichever.”  
  
That’s when Ahri realizes she hasn’t said anything to her. She’s too busy looking at Seraphine’s complexion, at her long, gorgeous pink hair, overwhelmed with how she’s an inch taller, her loose-fitting designer clothes she wears like fucking _pajamas_ …  
  
Ahri stands with pursed lips for a while longer before looking around with a dismissive sweep of her eyes. “What’re you waiting for? My permission?” She asks flatly, hoping it makes Seraphine feel stupid.  
  
Seraphine nods slowly as a means to fill the space, her eyes darting back and forth beneath shapely brows as she squints and tries to pinpoint _why_ it is exactly they’re just standing here. “Ah, okay… so I’ll just... go down to the bedroom.”  
  
And she spins on her heels and hurries over, ducking out with pep in her step.  
  
Ahri follows after a beat, wringing her hands out harshly in front of her to rid herself of the flurry of emotion she’s feeling. Because it was _silly_ of her to think that she was ever entitled to Evelynn all on her lonesome. She had agreed to this, after all, so all she needed to do was take a deep breath.  
  
But she hasn’t by the time she enters the dark fortress of Evelynn’s room with her arms crossed tighter over her chest and wearing a displeased frown.  
  
Seraphine is throwing open the blackout curtains, letting a little bit of yellow tinted light in. She immediately tugs out the chair from the vanity and turns it towards the bed before she notices Ahri has joined her.  
  
“Oh! This is for you!” Seraphine says eagerly as she gestures down at the cushioned seat.  
  
Ahri forces a wry smile, setting up in it without a word. Seraphine considers her for a beat and then turns slowly back to her work.  
  
“Do you mind if I put on some music?” Seraphine asks next and she still doesn’t know why it fucking matters what she wants, god _dammit_.  
  
“No,” Ahri says, staring at the things she has pulled out of her bag, only recognizing the length of rope for what it was, the other things she has laying out a mystery to her as of their intended use, but she can hazard a general guess.  
  
And Seraphine rotates her wrist to her face and pulls up her sleeve, swiping at skin to bring up her display. Even her piece was hidden cosmetically like Ahri’s and Evelynn’s—expensive work.  
  
Nylon strings begin to pluck through the air, the hidden sound system lulling above her head. Ahri looks around for the source, but it’s everywhere all at once. More pressingly, Seraphine sings under her breath. Of _course_ she could sing.  
  
“Hey, uh, Ahri? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” Seraphine asks after a few minutes of rummaging around.  
  
“I _am_ comfortable,” Ahri grits.  
  
“Yeah, okay. But… you’re not, though. Do you not want to do this?”  
  
Ahri raps the arm of her chair with impatient clicks of her nails. “Of course I want to.”  
  
“Okay,” Seraphine says after a pause, so painfully unconvinced. “Do you want me to treat you like you’re not there?”  
  
“That would be preferable,” Ahri says, drenched in faux sweetness.  
  
“Okay! I’m sure she’ll ask, but do you want Eve to do the same? I’m just trying to best prepa—”  
  
“ _Eve_?” Ahri interrupts, her insides sinking, her cheeks flushing in anger, her ribcage feeling crushed like a pod under foot. She even lets her call her by name, by a nickname, how can she not feel fucking slighted?  
  
Seraphine gapes at her, her lips forming a small “o” shape as she realizes what’s happening. “Uh… listen...” she starts, sitting on the bed facing her and nervously weaving her slender fingers together in her lap. “I went through the motions, too. It takes time to build this stuff up… but if you ever have a problem, you know she’s willing to talk it out. And if it’s _me_ that’s the problem, then I can go. The last thing I want to do is make you hate me… I guess you don’t have to like me, but I don’t want you to hate me.”  
  
Why was she being confronted like this? Why did she have to figure out her feelings right _now_? Couldn’t she just not know _why_ and go on with the goddamn thing? Why did they care what she thought at all? She has already agreed to the whole _fucking_ arrangement, so why the interrogation?  
  
Ahri stands, simmering. “You don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll wait in the loft,” she spits before stamping out of the room.  
  
It’s times like this that while she doesn’t miss coming out of the worst of withdrawals, Ahri desperately wants a hit of scratch. Then, the feeling of wanting to cry and not knowing why would at least slip away into something manageable. Something that would fix her right up to something presentable as the elevator dings and Evelynn steps into the landing hallway, immediately sensing Ahri in the loft suite wiping her eyes hastily.  
  
Ahri expects more questions as she bolts to stand, cringes as she prepares for the onslaught, but Evelynn only considers her briefly and says, “I’ll be right back,” before she’s gone.  
  
The guilt of falling out of the agreement weighs heavy in the seconds that tick by. Ahri can hear the murmurings of Seraphine and Evelynn in the far room carrying up the stairs when she swerves her fox ears towards them. They don’t have a clue that she can easily hear them, so they’re not exactly trying to be quiet from the lower level of the penthouse.  
  
“ _What happened_?” Evelynn starts, so gentle Ahri hardly catches it. It makes her fume.  
  
“ _She doesn’t like me, I think_.”  
  
“ _You think, or you know_?”  
  
“ _I’m not sure._ ”  
  
Evelynn is silent for a stretch. “ _This is my mistake. I got too excited. She’s not ready_.”  
  
Ahri prickles at that, the hairs along her tail rising as the stab of resentment makes her shrink into her seat. She wants to leave, she’s so smothered by her mistakes like a leaden pillow over her face. She’s been so fucking _stupid_ , not knowing when she should keep her god damn mouth shut.  
  
She just wants Evelynn’s approval so _bad_. She wants it _now_. She doesn’t want to fucking work for it, build it up or whatever.  
  
“ _What do you want me to do_?” Seraphine asks.  
  
“ _I haven’t sent you your allowance yet, but I’ll double it this week as long as you stay on call for me_.”  
  
“ _On call, then? Until Sunday_?”  
  
“ _Until Sunday is good. I’m sorry about all of this_.”  
  
“ _It’s fine, Eve. She might be a little confused, but she is_ really _pretty. Just your type_.”  
  
Ahri strains harder, even halting her breathing to make sure she doesn’t miss Evelynn’s response.  
  
“ _I’ll talk with her. My driver is waiting downstairs for you_.”  
  
“ _Okay_.”  
  
With that, both Evelynn and Seraphine resurface a minute later. Ahri looks elsewhere, ashamed, as Seraphine takes the elevator out of the penthouse.  
  
“Bye, Ahri,” Seraphine says just above a whisper after her, polite even in the end.  
  
Ahri doesn’t return the sentiment.  
  
Evelynn clacks over to her when the doors close, sitting across from “Are you alright?”  
  
She so obviously wasn’t alright, it’s humiliating to be asked. “I’m fine,” she murmurs. “Why is she leaving?” She asks the obvious, whatever was expected of her, like she didn’t know she was the root cause of the tension here.  
  
“I asked her to,” comes Evelynn’s simple response.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because things didn’t feel right.”  
  
“You don’t have to lie. It’s because of me, right?”  
  
Evelynn doesn’t confirm or deny—she only continues on, smooth and unassuming. “What was the issue, love?”  
  
Familiar, sourceless, _annoying_ tears threaten at the corners of Ahri’s eyes. “Me. I was the issue.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I didn’t—I don’t know. I’m sorry, Siren, I didn’t mean to…” Ahri chokes up, a bump in her voice that she forces down. _Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking cry, you fucking idiot._ “... mean to waste anyone’s time.”  
  
“You did nothing like that. I have a bad habit of letting people know if they’ve done something that wastes my time, and that isn’t what has happened.”  
  
Ahri actually kind of believes that, from what she knows about her. “Okay… it’s just that… how many pretty girls like that do you have at arms length from you?”  
  
Evelynn blinks. “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”  
  
Ahri cringes through every fiber of her being. She wants to take back the question so bad. “It’s nothing. It was stupid.”  
  
“It’s not stupid—what I meant to say is, are you asking how many people I have arrangements like that with?”  
  
Ahri nods.  
  
Evelynn pauses to think. “I used to have more, but it got a little too busy. Seraphine sees me biweekly, and I took you up recently because she can’t be with me most weekends anymore. And then…”  
  
“I’m with someone else. Romantically,” Evelynn says the last word as an afterthought, pausing over it. “I’ve never said that out loud before.”  
  
“Romantic?” Ahri repeats.  
  
“More or less, to put a name to it.”  
  
So, two people she had to compete with. Two people she had to split Evelynn with. Two people who she was going to have to compare herself to and wonder why she doesn’t amount up, two reasons that Evelynn could leave her high and dry whenever she wanted, two _fucking_ reasons why she shouldn’t be here and two reasons why she needs to constantly question her place and her importance, her _relevance_.  
  
Ahri pushes up from her chair, a poorly laid plan accosting all rationale as she closes the space between them in three easy strides, her hands fanning out over Evelynn’s shoulders, trying to assert herself, trying to be the boldest, loudest, biggest thing in the room—in Evelynn’s entire fucking world.  
  
She tries to bring her down into a kiss, surely met with resistance addled into confusion, but Ahri doesn’t immediately relent. Not with how she tilts forward on her tippy toes, knowing she wants it, _needs_ it, why would she push her away, now?  
  
Evelynn purses her lips, hardens her gaze, stands a little taller. “You’re too upset, darling.”  
  
“I’m not upset,” she fights, defensive and quick to correct her.  
  
“You are,” she whispers back, lacking any bite. “We’re not going to do this. Not until I know how to fix this.”  
  
She’s too fucking needy, starving for something that serves her and her alone right now, this second. “Please touch me,” Ahri begs, except for she can’t stop herself from crying in full, this time.  
  
And like that, it’s all completely ruined. She can’t come back from it all.  
  
Evelynn’s obvious discomfort is made apparent for the better half of a second before she shakes her head curtly, struggling for words, knowing she needs to try and meet her halfway. “I can’t. I’m—you can come lay in my bed, but I can’t, in my right mind—”  
  
Ahri cordially panics, pulse racing as she slowly spirals, fumbling and pushing away from her, stomping out of the suite hurriedly. “I want to go home.”  
  
Evelynn follows, cautious, _concerned_. “Then let me take you.”  
  
“I don’t want you or your fucking chauffeur, I can walk.” A subversion, something she wouldn’t expect because she feels so easily predictable. She didn’t want to be read so easily, didn’t _want_ to be so simple minded and of basic desire. She was a _fucking_ human being, not a two dimensional whore with abandonment issues. She _wants_ to be more than that, but it’s the realization that she _isn’t_ that hurts more than anything.  
  
“Ahri, _please_ , let’s sit and talk about this.”  
  
Ahri snaps for real, turning sharply and shouting, “I’m stupid, but I’m not fucking dumb! You don’t think I know you’re making me call you Siren so you don’t have to get close to me? You just want to show me around, show me your things, fuck me only when _you_ feel like it, and then kick me out, right?”  
  
Stunned, Evelynn tries to smooth it over with a hurried, “That’s not why—“  
  
But Ahri doesn’t let her. “I don’t fucking care why! Everyone else around you is more important than me, and I wish you would just TELL me where I belong! You ask too many questions, you let me decide too much, I fucking hate this and I fucking hate _YOU_!”  
  
She’s hurt and she doesn’t know the first thing about Evelynn, but she hopes that that hurts her as much as she’s been hurt as she storms out of the loft and to the elevator lift, jamming the button to bring up the car and quietly sobbing as she does.  
  
And _god_ , Ahri wants Evelynn to put her foot in the door and drag her out when she steps into the lift, professing something to her about how it’s going to be, force her to stay, to see reason, to see something that isn’t confused, blurry red.  
  
Instead, Evelynn totally respects the fact that she’s rushing out—gives her wide clearance with her arms crossed, lips pursed, eyes slit and dark as coals, and her expression otherwise unreadable.  
  
It’s too much to ask Evelynn to rip down pillars for her, but she can’t help but think Kai’sa would do it for her. Or she would have, once upon a time. No one would do that for her again because she fucked it up somehow. She fucked up her only chance at something normal.  
  
Ahri hesitates in pressing the ground floor button, only finding resolve when Evelynn appears in sight, staring with a hand covering her mouth pointedly as the doors close.  
  
She was a mess of damaged goods. How could anyone ever want her? She’s annoying, stupid, hard to be around, needy, and better off fucking dead.

* * *

Ahri begrudgingly returns to Sivir’s apartment, shouldering in tiredly and looking forward to just passing out and leaving tonight behind as far as humanly possible.  
  
“You look like shit,” Sivir says from the couch.  
  
“Thanks, had no clue.”  
  
“Her money isn’t good enough, or what?”  
  
Ahri severely regrets telling Sivir about her new side gig. If she had known she’d be this insufferable about it, she would have kept her talkative mouth to herself. “It’s not about the money.”  
  
Sivir scoffs. “The fuck it is. You know how many girls would kill to be in your position?”  
  
She didn’t have a clue as to what she had been through today, and of _course_ she makes it about the money. Just, of _course_. “Fuck off, Sivir,” she dismisses her, wishing she had a room to duck away into, but the couch was her only respite and Sivir was occupying it.  
  
“No. You’re chock full of shit, you know that?” Her voice raises, unlike her, but that’s when Ahri notices the bottle of booze sitting on the table in front of her.  
  
Ahri lags at that, stopping in her tracks as she pieces together the situation, disgusted at how Sivir snapping at her like that actually _excites_ her. She wants to push her, flirt with a cliff’s edge, fight tooth and nail. She rises to the grindstone, sharpening her aggression.  
  
So Ahri snaps back, ugly and fiery, letting it flow so easily into the channel of her tongue. “Like you aren’t full of shit?! Who pays your way through your gambling problem? What you earn at Sarah’s doesn’t cut it, right? I’ve got my hand in Siren’s pocket and you’ve got yours in mine. The hand that feeds, _bitch_ —don’t fucking come at me like that!”  
  
As intended, Ahri perfectly rouses Sivir to raise her voice back, “You mind your own goddamn business! You think you can talk to me like that when I’ve let you in like this?!”  
  
“So if I leave right now and stop payments dead, you won’t have loan sharks after you?” Silence, stunned and surprised. Ahri scoffs. “Really? That's all I had to say to shut you up?”  
  
Sivir bolts up to stand, sneering, tall and bulky—muscular like Kai’sa could have been, had she not been siphoning drugs constantly. She charges her, intent in her step, and a cold rush of dread flooding her senses. Her mouth runs dry, dizzy as Sivir harshly grips the whole front of Ahri’s shirt in one palm, shoving her back hard like she’s just a rag doll against the counter.  
  
_God, finally_ something—she could cry, the catharsis that’s released at the prospect of something so punishing, and she hasn’t even _struck_ her.  
  
“Who told you I owed money?” Sivir bites, voice low.  
  
“I’m not fucking dumb.”  
  
“You sure seem like it, spouting about shit you don’t know _anything_ about.”  
  
Ahri laughs, bitter and short. “Stupid like the kind of person who gets herself into debt?”  
  
Two hands grip onto Ahri’s shirt, the fabric wrapping so tight around her neck, leaving her slightly dazed as her ire becomes more distant as her mind occupies a most dark, far away place. She invited this. She created this. This was what she wanted.  
  
“You don’t know the first fucking _thing_ about me,” Sivir grits, muscles tight at her jaw.  
  
“You’re jealous,” Ahri says, darkly elated at the way Sivir grinds her teeth and pushes into her _rougher_. “Jealous that I’ve got money and you don’t.” _Hurt me. I want it. Now,_ please _, just fucking hit me hard, break my face—I wanna take it, I wanna feel it because I fucking deserve it._  
  
It’s all held up so well until Ahri _moans_ as Sivir wraps a hand, flesh and blood, around her neck. Unable to keep it to herself, so starved for contact and longing for it, it’s still entirely unexpected.  
  
“Holy shit,” Sivir spits, full of disbelief as she glimpses Ahri’s near drunken state for the first time, shooting back away from her like she’s accidentally touched a hot surface. “You’re getting off to this.”  
  
The embarrassment only serves to further Ahri’s contention as she squares up into burning irritation. “You’re fucking crazy, why would I—I wouldn’t… there’s—”  
  
“Calling ME crazy? I want to fucking _kill_ you and you’re into it,” Sivir mutters.  
  
Ahri laughs, one note and utterly without feeling. “You _only_ want to kill me?”  
  
“You’re fucking impossible, Ahri.”  
  
She’s losing her. She has to try—has to steal something away from her. “I’ll stop if you just fuck me,” Ahri sputters out, eyes downcast in shame, not even committing to it in whole.  
  
Sivir, stunned, moving farther away in repulsion, shakes her head. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”  
  
It’s the worst thing she can say, the worst thing she could do. Ahri digs her nails into her arms, tears welling up to be incessantly ever burning even though she’s long cried out. She grabs her things then and there, consumed in an abjectly mortified silence before she leaves.  
  
She was stupid for thinking she could ever get anything worthwhile out of Sivir. Out of anyone. It’s insanity, thinking things could ever end up differently.  
  
Her parents didn’t want her. Viktor didn’t want her. Kai’sa didn’t want her. Sarah didn’t want her. Evelynn didn’t want her. Of course Sivir didn’t want her, it was the natural progression of things.  
  
It’s nights like this where Ahri really measures her worth—how much does getting back on drugs and skating that life again really serves her more than she’d be serving everyone around her if she was _gone_ , gone.  
  
She has even thought of how she’d do it. Heard about others who did it. But she cries thinking about it because it still scares her. She didn’t want to feel any pain, as hypocritical as that was.  
  
But maybe it didn’t have to be painful, if she did it right. She could go quiet with something that’ll simply close her eyes, leaving her numb as nothing until she fades away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this one was rough, but i hope ya'll continue to stick around. we got a little farther to dig, but thanks for coming along for this much because i know it's a lot and i'm actually really self conscious about delving this deep and angsty. feels really personal in a way like i'm exposing myself.


End file.
